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Yahoo! Small Business > Yahoo! Small Business Help > Merchant Solutions > Store Editor Help > Yahoo! SiteBuilder

Preparing to Export Your Product Catalog

In order to import your product catalog into Yahoo! SiteBuilder you must first complete a few steps. You will need to add a field "Product-url" to the Default-table in Catalog Manager. You then enter a Product-url value for all of your products. Once that is complete, your catalog is ready to export but you must first enable your product catalog (catalog.xml). Finally you are ready to import your product catalog to Yahoo! SiteBuilder.

  1. Add Product url to Default-table
  2. Add Product-url values to your products
  3. Enable your product catalog—catalog.xml
  4. Import your product catalog to Yahoo! SiteBuilder

Add Product-url field to Default-table

  1. If you are not already logged into your account, please do so and go to Store Manager. From the Store Manager, click "Catalog Manager." This takes you to the Catalog Manager.
  2. Click "Manage Your Tables." This takes you to the Tables page.
  3. Click "Default-table." This takes you to the Edit Table page for Default-table, as shown in Figure 1.
  4. Scroll down to the Shopping Fields section and click [Edit]. This takes you to the Edit Table—Shopping Fields page, as shown in Figure 1.
  5. In the Field Name drop-down menu, select "Product-url." This refreshes the page with the Product-url.

Figure 1: In this example, we click [Edit] on the Edit Table - Default-table page, which takes us to the Edit Table – Shopping Fields page. Then we select "Product-url" from the Field Name drop-down menu, which refreshes the page with the Product-url field displayed.
Note:Notice that a Default Value field appears when you select "Product-url" from the Field Name drop-down menu in the Edit Table – Shopping Fields page. Anything you enter into this Default Value field will be used as the default value for the field every time you create a new item.

For example, if you type "http://www.my-first-store.com/" in Default Value, the next time you create a new Default-table item in Catalog Manager, that item will already have "http://www.my-first-store.com/" in its Product-url field. All you need to do is add the product's file name at the end, for example, "wt01.html," which makes the URL "http://www.my-first-store.com/wt01.html."

Having a default value for a field can save a lot of time, especially if you need to create many items in Catalog Manager.

  1. Click [Update]. This returns you to the Edit Table - Default-table page.
  2. Click [Save] to complete your edit to the table. This returns you to the Tables page, where you now see the message, "Table default-table was saved successfully."

Add Product-url value to your products

Now you need to update your products with values for the Product-url field.

  1. In Catalog Manager, click "Items." This takes you to the Items page.
  2. Click the link for your product. This takes you to the Edit Item page for your product.
  3. Scroll down to the Product-url field and type in the full address for the product's page.
Note:When you are creating a new product in Catalog Manager, the page for the URL you enter in the Product-url field doesn't exist yet. However, the page will be created when you publish the changes to Catalog Manager and then create the page in SiteBuilder. You should name the page after the product's ID. For example, the Product-url value should be "http://www.my-first-store.com/wt01.html" if the following is true:
  • Your domain is "http://www.my-first-store.com"
  • Your product's ID is "wt01"
  • The file for the product page is located in the root directory of your Web Hosting account
If you create a subdirectory called "products" that's supposed to contain the files for all your product pages, then the item's Product-url value should be "http://www.my-first-store.com/products/wt01.html."
  1. Click [Save]. This takes you back to the Item page.
  2. Make sure catalog.xml is enabled

The data for your Merchant Solutions site can be published in an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file called catalog.xml. This way you can allow a process outside of Yahoo! to import and use the data, for example, a third-party marketing program.

Enable your Product Catalog

Before you can import all of your product catalog data into Yahoo! SiteBuilder, but you must first make sure that the catalog export file (catalog.xml) is enabled.

  1. On the Store Manager front page, click "Search Engines" within the Promote section. This takes you to the Promote Your Site in Search Engines page, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Promote Your Site on Search Engines page contains links to learning more about search engine optimization, and it contains the Export of Store Contents section, which includes catalog.xml..
  1. Make sure that the catalog.xml field has the "Enabled" radio button selected, as shown in A Figure 2. If it isn't enabled, select it.
  2. Click [Done].
    If you're curious about what this file looks like, you can view it by clicking the "Download" link.

Import Product Catalog to Yahoo! SiteBuilder

Now that you have added Product-url to the Default-table, added Product-urls to your products in Catalog Manager and enabled your product catalog (catalog.xml), you are ready to import the product catalog into Yahoo! SiteBuilder:

  1. Launch Yahoo! SiteBuilder.
  2. Click Tools > Store Catalog > Import. (After you import your catalog the first time, the command in the menu changes to Tools > Store Catalog > Refresh.) This opens the Sign in to Yahoo! dialog box.
  3. Enter your Yahoo! ID and Password in the Sign in to Yahoo! dialog box and click [OK]. SiteBuilder next contacts the server and opens the Import Store Catalog dialog box.
  4. If you have more than one Merchant Solutions account, select it from the drop-down menu in the Import Store Catalog dialog box.
  5. Click [OK]. The Import Progress box appears so you can monitor the catalog import process.
  6. When the Import Completed! box appears, click [OK]. Now you can start creating your first product page.

Note:Importing your catalog downloads all the data from Catalog Manager dating from the last time it was published. When you make any Item edits in Catalog Manager that you would like to export to SiteBuilder, you have to publish Catalog Manager and re-import your catalog (Tools > Store Catalog > Refresh).


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