Bad Feed Error in Froogle

[Jan]

That will be it, froogle does not allow HTML in descriptions, so when you tick the remove embedded HTML it does just that, if you only have HTML then there will be no description left.

I use HTML in my product descriptions for the mole end website, what I have done is moved the descriptions into html file, added a customvar to my products that points to the name of the file, set is filename and use file contents flags on the custom var, then in the product URL I have removed the desciption and put the custom var in its place.

I then type the description I want to appear on froogle into the product description without HTML.

It seems to work well, I can also edit the html files in a proper editor which is nicer that changing it in Actinic.

Regards,

[Nigel]

Don't know if it will help but our froogle feed seems to work ok - we set the quoted fields to YES and edit the feed by taking out
html-escaped=YES and
quoted= YES
but can't upload any products that have a zero price ie products that are 'sum of components'

[pinbrook]

The problem we have here with the Froogle feed is not the Froogle Mash or even the output file from Actinic. It seems to boil down to what people are putting in descriptions etc.

Actinic is very versatile - we can bend it in almost any direction we choose to suit ourselves. These flexibilities work within the software. The problem arises when trying to interface with another system. Rock and hard place comes to mind.

Whilst it is frustrating to encounter these clashes, one of the advantages of Actinic is its flexibility, thus problems with the feed have to be addressed by each shop owner as an all singing all dancing feed is never going to be possible.

[TraceyHand]

Well, I have tried using both the Actinic Froogle generator and Froogle Mash with the same end result.
Every time I get "invalid URL" when the URLs shown are correct (same as the OP)
When I view the file as a txt file, it looks fine. I can't work out what is wrong
It's very frustrating and I'm getting nowhere trying to suss it out myself.
Nobody got any ideas about the invalid URL thing then?
Tracey

[Jan]

I looked into extended the froogle mash to allow you to produce a more tailored feed, so you would be able for example to provide a different product description , or include a single product for several categories, however when I checked the rules for froogle they quite clearly say that if you do either of those things your feed will be removed from froogle. It is very inflexible.

I have had quite a reports of good results from froogle (makes a note, must add an option to append ?source=froogle to the end of the URL to make tracking easier).

Regards,

[TraceyHand]

So, are they effectively saying the duplicates are out?
Or have I misunderstood?
Are product duplicates separately done in a Froogle export?
Tracey

[Jan]

Nobody got any ideas about the invalid URL thing then?

I think that froogle is broken (or the bit that assesses new feeds anyway).

I wasn't saying that duplicates are out, I was saying that your feed content has to match your website content. Sorry for the confusion.

Regards,

[TraceyHand]

Thanks Jan,
As long as it's Froogle that's broken and not me, that's fine! HOpefully someone is fixing it!
Not to worry about the duplicates. It's not something I'd considered. When you mentioned about products in more than one section, I just wondered, that's all.
Cheers
Tracey

[Jan]

Melody,
3) When you get the mash output from Mole-End, load it to some sort of text-editor such as Text Pad and do a search and replace on "http://yourdomain.com" replace with "http://www.yourdomain.com" If you closely read the instructions on Froogle for creating an upload file you will notice that they require the "www" in front of "yourdomain.com"
Eagle

You shouldn't need to do this, the mash program takes your URL from your shop settings on Actinic, check that you have them correctly defined on there.

Regards,