Looking for advice for massive product/picture population

[bjunix]

Hello

 

I plan to set up a osC shop. I have an existing database of a lot of products. ( Transition of real jewelry shop into webshop).

 

Now I have two problems and looking for existing solutions. may be you can post your own picture uploading experience. If there are no existing solutions/good advices I'll try to build a contribution.

 

But letz get to the point:

 

First Problem:

 

I like to use easypopulate to populate my shop with products. I use MS Office/OpenOffice to load the existing table ( I already alter the database structure to my needs ).

Now, I like to define the picture for the product. Do I have to look up the name of the picture and than add it manually to the table ( hell, thats a lot of work to be done ! ) . I tried to use the "Insert -> picture" feature. So its easy to choose the right picture and insert it into the table. [ Even this can be a hell of work :( ]

But when I convert the table into 'text (tab delimted)' the information about the picture is gone. Too bad.

What to do? I tried to insert a hyperlink and the remove the prefixing c:\..\..\ with the "replace" function of office. That will be ok. Some other suggestions here?

 

Second Problem:

 

Resulting indirectly from the first problem [ for sure it does :rolleyes: ]

I use a Sony Digicam to aquire the product pictures. So I cant be really sure that it'll give the images a unique name over the time. Better said, i cant rely on the camera giving my images a unique name over the following years.

So it'll be a pain to rename all the images to a unique name and than assign them to the correct row in the table. So I thought I just insert the standart sony image name into the table. Than i'll need a php script checking the table for the picture name, prefixes it with the model number, than alter the table and the corresponding image and upload the whole stuff to the server.

 

Thats what I am thinking, but i am sure the has to be some 'allready-done'-solutions for this. Its not a unique problem, isnt it?

 

So, what are you doing to solve this problem? What are your experiences?

Ok if you have a small shop its ok to do it manually and assign unique image names, but as soon as you'll have 1000+ items in you shop it'll really get out of hand.

 

I hope my questions arent to confused and every body understands what i try to ask. English isnt my mother tongue so please forgive if i made some crucial grammar errors. If something isnt clear, feel free to ask ;)

Edited February 28, 2006 by bjunix

[bjunix]

I like to move the question to general forum.... is there a edit function time out?

Edited February 28, 2006 by bjunix