Easy Populate Advanced (EPA) – Blank Page

I recently came across this problem; may be it’s not really a problem but it is something worth noting. While importing an EPA file, EPA import will just hang up and display a blank screen. I noticed that the EPA file is actually imported but only up to some point, the first 78 rows to be specific. This implies the code broke on row 79. I didn’t understand the problem immediately because I compared row 78 with row 79; both look similar to me. After a while I decided to remove row 79 and re-import again. To my surprise everything worked fine! Later, after extensive research on the culprit row 79, I finally realized that the problem was due to:

v_products_model

The specified length is 25 characters, but in my offending row, the length was 26. So for this particular row to be imported, I had to alter the number of characters in my products model number to be 25 or less.

If you really need more than 25 characters for product model; go to epconfigure.php (located in admin folder), change:

$modelsize = 25;

to a number of your choice then go to your products table and change

products_model

to the same number.

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Which Easy Populate is good for me? Easy Populate Basic (EPB) or Easy Populate Advanced (EPA)?

It is important to know that CRE Loaded EPB is in many respect similar to osC Easy Populate. In EPB product uniqueness is based on ‘product model.’ If you are using osCommerce, the only option you have is pretty much the Easy Populate, this is the contribution you have to install. On the other hand if you are using CRE Loaded, you have to wander at some point which one you have to use. This is what I recommend:
* if products on your site are going to be the same over time then go for EPA
* if products on your site are going to be different from time to time, then go for EPB
* if you are using data feed with schedule tasks to load your products them EPB will be a good option to consider
* there may be situations where things have to be done differently, I encouraged store administrators to think about this before investing too much time on a particular EP.
* Lastly if you are using or going to use SEO URL, you need to factor this into your considerations at the beginning, you don’t want to lose all those pages that search engines have indexed for your site. Talking about SEO URL, Ultimate SEO URLs, is a good one to use because it works well with the google xml site map generator.

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