Magento - adding products advice

[bob-in-toon]

Hi guys, hope someone might be able help out with something.

I'm involved with a firm that has a newly constructed magento website.

Ideally we want to add products via excel (CSV) files as opposed to the admin. Products have different specs and sizes so will probably be setup as configurable products with simple products as the options.

A developer who works for me, a great guy but its his first time with magento, is having some issues figuring out a way of adding new products using excel. I'm fine with exporting and importing, but its creating new products with different attributes attached, outside of admin thats causing the issue.

Any ideas and any plugins / addons that you use that you think might be good for us?

Or any other suggestions for streamlining the adding of products as much as possible.

Happy to receive messages from developers too.

Cheers

Bob

[AlanQ]

Tell him to have a look at http://wiki.magmi.org/
I have to say I don't know how to configure it myself but the chap that does our web site used it for dealing with an xml feed and it works very well.

[Du1point8]

http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/3_-_store_setu...

http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/magento/import...

http://tutorialmagento.com/import-configurable-pro...

Youtube will and does have a lot of videos on how to do this.

[jammy_basturd]

AlanQ said:

Tell him to have a look at http://wiki.magmi.org/
I have to say I don't know how to configure it myself but the chap that does our web site used it for dealing with an xml feed and it works very well.

Use Magmi unless you want to be waiting hours for even the simplest import.

Just note, there are a few issues with Magento 1.8, but only once you start doing more complicated stuff.

[bob-in-toon]

Thanks guys, have passed that magmi link onto him, he's going to look into it today , will keep you updated

[Wouldloveacsl]

bob-in-toon said:

Hi guys, hope someone might be able help out with something.

I'm involved with a firm that has a newly constructed magento website.

Ideally we want to add products via excel (CSV) files as opposed to the admin. Products have different specs and sizes so will probably be setup as configurable products with simple products as the options.

A developer who works for me, a great guy but its his first time with magento, is having some issues figuring out a way of adding new products using excel. I'm fine with exporting and importing, but its creating new products with different attributes attached, outside of admin thats causing the issue.

Any ideas and any plugins / addons that you use that you think might be good for us?

Or any other suggestions for streamlining the adding of products as much as possible.

Happy to receive messages from developers too.

Cheers

Bob

You might want to add a Magento extension like this: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/imp...

[Wouldloveacsl]

This one has better reviews but is twice the cost http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/cus...