Comma Separated Values (CSV) are the most basic information file that you can get. The file does not have any formatting data; information is stored as just basic text separated by commas. This makes CSV files ideal for storing large amounts of data for things like shopping catalogues.
The main benefit is that instead of entering products one-by-one through a template, you can use a programme like Excel to enter hundreds, even thousands, of products and attributes and then simply upload them to your online store. You will find the ‘save as’ menu of Excel has an option to ‘save as/ file type/.CSV’.
A good trick is to create a few products in your shop with all the information you need and then ‘export’ the products as a CSV file (this is a fairly common option in good solutions). Once you have your base CSV file, you can open it in Excel and add more products. Once you are finished, you simply ‘import’ the CSV file back in to your solution. CSV imports and exports are usually managed by a wizard system that takes you through a step-by-step process to upload or download your CSV file. You can see the simple 'browse and upload' approach taken by the ezpopulate feature in Zen Cart below.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
If your eShop solution does not support CSV import / export or if you need to upload other data like multiple product images you will need to use an File Transfer Protocol (FTP) programme to access your server to store the relevant files. WARNING: by accessing your site via FTP it is possible to delete and overwrite site files so make sure you are very clear which files to edit and always make a backup.
A well known FTP programme is Filezilla. FileZilla is a powerful, yet free software with drag-and-drop capability for transferring files over the Net. FileZilla is the most popular FTP client and is used by webmasters from all over the world. You can download FileZilla Software here.
Uploading files using Filezilla
Once you have the FileZilla client downloaded and installed on your local hard drive start it up and click on the computer icon as shown below. This opens the Site Manager.
Give your site a name and complete the following fields: Host, user, password. This information should have been issued to you by your hosting provider.
Press Connect and Filezilla will connect to your web site.
The left hand side (Local Site) shows the folder structure of your local hard drive. The window below this shows the files inside the current folder.
The right hand side (Remote Site) shows the folder structure of the server containing your web site. In this instance the website is in a folder called httpdocs. The name of this folder changes depending on the hosting company.
On the right hand side click into "httpdocs" to see the web site structure. In the example below there are only a few files on the remote site.
To upload a file to the remote folder click on the file you want to move from the left hand window and drag and drop it into the right hand window. The speed of upload depends on your connection to the internet. The bottom pane shows the file progress.
Dealing with firewalls
If you are behind a firewall and/or router you will need to use Passive mode for FTP to get a stable connection. You can see this setting as is shown bellow:
Open FileZilla and go menu Edit -> Settings. In the Connections section, please click Firewall settings and check the Passive mode option.
