Screen: ShopSite > Utilities > Database > Upload/Download
Database Upload/Download
Use ShopSite’s database upload and download functions to put copies of your store’s databases on your local computer, and to upload information to your store. Uploading a database lets you build all or part of your store from virtually any spreadsheet or database program. In fact, with two carefully constructed databases, you can build a complete store with two quick uploads, without having to enter a single product or page description manually in the ShopSite interface.
To download a database:
All ShopSite databases are downloaded as tab-delimited text files.
- Select the database to download:
- Products—Information about all products in your store
- Pages—Information about all pages in your store
- Associates—Information about all associates configured in your store
- Click Download
- Click Proceed on the Database Download screen.
- Choose to either download the file to your local computer, or save the file on the server that hosts your store.
- When you download the database file to your local computer, the next step varies, depending on the browser that you are using:
- If you are using a Netscape browser, select the location and file name for the downloaded file.
- If you are using a Microsoft browser, the database information will display as a text file in your browser window. Once the information is displayed, click File > Save As and save it as a text file.
To uplolad a database:
You can upload products and pages databases that you have previously downloaded, or you can upload databases that you have created with a program on your local computer, such as a spreadsheet or database program. The databases must be in a delimted-text format for uploading, such as a tab-delimited file.
Note: |
If you are uploading both products and pages databases, you should upload the products database first to maintain the relationships of which products appear on which pages.
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- If you are not uploading a database that you previously downloaded, use a spreadsheet or database program to create a database of either product or page information. You can even use a text editor or word processor if you know how to create a tab-delimited file. You can create multiple databases, such as one for each category of products that you sell in your store. (ShopSite has only one products database and one pages database. If you maintain multiple page or product files for uploading, theywill be combined into the single database when they are uploaded.) See Database Upload Fields for details about the fields and values to include in each database.
Use the following strings for special characters within fields. ShopSite will convert these strings to the correct characters during the upload.
|
| new line |
|n| |
| carriage return |
|r| |
| tab |
|t| |
- Save the database as a tab-delimited text file. (You can choose a different delimiter, but ShopSite is expecting the Tab character as the default.)
- From the Database Upload/Download screen, select the database to upload, either products or pages. You cannot upload associates databases.
- Click Upload.
- Specify the file to upload.
- Match the fields in your file with ShopSite database fields.
- View the results of the upload.
