stroudsco

Just to confirm…

I agree with the team here… just pull down the sample csv and open in OPEN OFFICE (don’t use excel) – you will be successful if you use the demo csv file in open office software which is FREE for mac and PC – YOU MUST have the following columns completed for every place in your csv file:

post_type I put: gd_place

post_address I put the full address I had, mine are not complete
post_city I put the word ‘city’
post_region I put the word ‘region’
post_country I put the word ‘country’
post_zip I put the word ‘postcode’
post_latitude All my listings are geo coded so this must be put in
post_longitude All my listings are geo coded so this must be put in

The only other things I completed on the file was

post_title
geodir_timing
geodir_contact

Every other column was left blank – when I say blank I mean the structure of the file and headers were NOT TOUCHED – but the fields below were left empty ( see file attached)

The reason why I did the above is two fold, One – I am not looking for a directory that runs by city or region, I want a single worldwide searchable directory – also it looked very busy when I started entering 100’s of cities and region’s – also your database needs to be 110% clean and broken down exactly as above for the directory to work as it should, ie. when searching by city, region zip etc… if any of the columns for any of your places are missing a zip, region etc – the file will not load or will fail while loading…

And Two.. I needed this running NOW, I have would rather have everything uploaded and then can work on changing or cleaning things at my leisure.

If you are starting a brand new venture or directory the team has done you a massive favour, just use the sample csv file with the correct software and you should be fine…

Remember to only upload 250 listings a time – I uploaded 250 then saved that csv file (250-1) then another 250 and saved (250-2) this means if things go wrong I haven’t over written just one file and then have to start again.

Things I recommend you do to save yourself from going a little crazy..

** if you have a spare site or test install – play for a day testing things and learn what not to do – I broke the plugin twice 😉

Now…

1) Start with a completely clean install and immediately back it up – so you can revert back to that completely untouched install if you need to.

2) Install required core and plugins and activate – the first time I put in demo data which later caused trouble so I would avoid.

3) I would then complete all the settings in the plugin, going through every option even if you think you don’t need to and save each section.

4) Download the Open office which is FREE

5) Download the sample CSV and open in Open Office – now save it and upload it to the new site – if it works go back to the file in Open Office and remove the three demo places and put a single one of your places in the file and save – upload – if this works you know you have the ability to upload all your places, if it doesn’t and it did with the demo places you have done something wrong… you have to then work out what you did – but if you follow my guide above you can’t go far wrong.

6) Don’t try and upload to many files at once – I found 250 to be a happy number.

Problems I found…

1) Open Office sometimes drops of zero’s from the end of your geocoded addresses – right click on the longitude and latitude columns – go to ‘format cells’ and drop to ‘text’ input and click ok.

NOT RELATED TO THE ABOVE

1) Flex slider caused problems in my theme so I switched to elastic slide.

2) I had the image problems – again this was under flew slider in css, I removed the min width and height.

3) Under events – if a show runs over three days it shouldn’t have three entries – ideal home show is on for 2 months nearly so it would have 50 entries?

I hope this helps.

Dave

Hi Nitefader,

I will be getting onto this hopefully a bit later tonight, I know I had a few issues with this last time, the csv file I managed to pull down from my old GT site doesn’t have the address in the correct order.

I went back to basics after a few fails and uploaded the sample csv to my new site, this works perfectly – I then worked my way through the csv replacing and deleting each coloumn for example:

1) I change the content for the title and did a test upload – All good
2) I left the content in the title row blank and did an upload – All good

I did this for nearly every column until I got the ‘no records added’ error – it seems that nearly every column can even be left blank and an upload is fine IF:

You have the following correct:

– Address
– City
– Region
– Country
– Zip
– Long
– Lat

As far as my testing has gone, it will add the records if this information is correct – it also added the city – region and country to the map as well – i have only done this so far in testing.

I am a little concerned about having 100’s of cities and region all added to my directory, in the past i just has a worldwide include all GT directory that worked well.

I will update as I go

Cheers

Opps…

Yep I got a similar problem trying to fix the category issue – I deactivated the plugin and its killed the site.

Just for future reference – we have to deactivate all other gd plugins first then the core plugin then things will be OK?

Thanks