Cats/products are wrong

Actually, the product images I just deleted look right. But the categories don’t match and the product counts are incorrect. I’ll try again.

Nevermind, I see what’s happening. It’s pulling in the Etsy categories, not the “sections” that the store has created to organize the products. Can you pull in those store-specific sections in addition to the Etsy categories?

It looks like I have all the products imported – I just had to keep clicking Save on the importer page, as it looked like it was timing out.

Now that I have them all imported, how would I structure the site to display them as a catalog? Are there short codes to display entire categories?

Sorry, just found the Readme file. Will go through that and report back.

Alright, so I’m trying to figure out how to import the store-specific categories, which from what I gather might be making use of this code in the readme file:

= etsy_importer_category_key =
The custom post type’s Category key.

Usage:

function your_project_modify_etsy_importer_category_key() {

	return 'my_category';
}
add_filter( 'etsy_importer_category_key', 'your_project_modify_etsy_importer_category_key' );

The problem is I’m not sure where to add that to make it work. There are no instructions for us novices on how to implement that code or where. I don’t even know for sure that this will achieve what I’m after.

Also, after my second import, I’m noticing that all the products are imported on the back-end. But there is no links to the products on the front end. What needs to be done to display the Etsy store on the front end? Do I need to create a blank page and plug in some short code to display the store?

And lastly, when I view a product page there is no link for the user to click over to view and buy the product on Etsy. Isn’t that supposed to be displayed automatically on all products?

That filter isn’t what you’re looking for, that sets up the taxonomy slug to use. Not something related to the Etsy categories. For educational purposes, it’s a snippet of code that’d go in your theme’s functions.php file.

Unless mistaken, I believe the plugin should be importing all available from the store, not necessarily by store category organization. It’s not set up, from what I can see, to handle specific categories at a time.

The readme and https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/etsy-importer/ should both have some shortcode examples of what’s available out of the box.

The products are imported into a post type with a post type slug of “etsy_products”. It’s registered by default to be public and has_archives is set to true as well, so there should be a post type archive available on your frontend. This detail is likely underdocumented and we’ll want to look into improving on that part.

So there is no way to mimic the way the store is organized? The Etsy store I’m importing has 6 categories/sections created for it – not base Etsy categories, but custom categories created by the store owner. Ideally, I’d like to replicate that structure and display those custom created categories in a navigation bar, pointing to pages that list products associated with those categories.

I still don’t quite understand why the product pages were created without a link pointing to the product page on Etsy to allow for purchasing. Is there a setting that needs to be changed to give the user a path to purchase the product? It’s not being displayed by default after the import.

Also, it’s unclear how to actually display the store on the site after the products are imported. There is no navigation added to the site on the front end after import and when I try and view the category pages they’re displaying 404 errors. The only thing that displays are the product pages, but I have no way of navigating to them.

I hate to say it, but I don’t think our plugin here isn’t quite that robust in its current state. It also focuses on getting the data into the website, not how exactly they’re used/displayed. The shortcodes provide a starting point, but the rest is up to customization by the site owner. Another thing to add to the list of things we need to clarify more with the plugin.

I do believe the products should have custom fields holding more information about the products, including the external links. These need to be set to display if not using the shortcodes.

You likely need to flush the rewrite rules to clear the 404 error part, just visit the permalinks page and don’t change any settings. A small nuance with post types added after pretty permalinks have been set.

You’ll need to add links to either the individual products or to the archive url for the post type to the menu. That’s not something we are able to automate. From the looks of the code, the archive url is likely going to be "https://www.yourdomain.com/products/" May vary depending on your permalink settings, but that’s likely it.

Thanks Michael, I’m not sure this is going to work after all. I think it has a lot of potential but for stores with hundreds of products and custom sections there needs to be more options once the products are imported. I can’t justify building out 300 product pages and putting them in static categories.

There has been some frustrated Etsy store owners lately, as Etsy just changed their search algorithm and it’s hurting a lot of stores. A plugin like this would allow a lot of those owners to populate a WP installation with their products and still use the Etsy checkout process, but then they could take advantage of all the great plugins for WP for SEO, merchandising and building their content and audience. I think this plugin, or a plugin like it would do pretty well if it made the process easier, even if it was a paid version. I know I’d push clients to use it and build them a site.

Valid feedback by all means. We will evaluate it and see what we decide on. We haven’t been putting much active development focus on it lately, admittedly.

In any event, thanks for all the replies. I may just use a service like Virb.com or Craftlaunch.com. I’d rather use WP to have more flexibility and power over everything, but I also have to keep it somewhat simple to manage for the client.