Froogle Feed for StoreFront 6
by Structured Solutions

Froogle is an extension of the Google search engine that millions of people around the globe use daily to research products before they purchase. Listing your products in Froogle is a free way to extend the reach of your marketing efforts to millions of new customers. Unfortunately, the product feed file can be complex to generate and it must be sent periodically or your products will be dropped from the catalog. Froogle Feed automates the process of generating and sending a product feed file from your store to Google.

Features

• Generates a formatted product feed file from any StoreFront 6 store
  • Converts product description to valid format
  • Builds Category hierarchy for each product
  • Generates valid feed file
• Automatically sends the product feed to Google as often as every day
• Supports both MS Access and SQL Server database formats
• Customizable fields with tight integration to StoreFront features
• QueryString added to product url
• Function hook to get product ISBN

Tables of Contents

• Installation Instructions
• Getting Started
• Uninstall Instructions
• Support

Installation Instructions

Froogle Feed has support files (located in the bin directory) that include all the necessary logic to create and send a product feed to Google, and a merchant tool interface that is used to configure and control the product feed. These instructions assume that the files you will modify are still in their original format as supplied by LaGarde. If you have customized the files and can not determine how to integrate the changes listed below, please contact  support@structured-solutions.net for help.

Part 1. Add Froogle Product Feed Tool to Your Site

1. Froogle Feed is delivered as a self-extracting program. Run the program to extract the Froogle Feed files to your computer. This will create to subdirectories: bin and ssaddons .
2. Import the files from the bin directory that was created, to the bin directory of your store. Most stores only have one bin directory for both the unsecured and secured pages of the store. If you have a separate bin directory for the secured pages, please copy the new bin files to both bin directories of your store.
   
   Note: The following steps are identical for the both the trial and licensed versions. Only step 2 above is required to upgrade from the trial to the production version.
   
3. Make a backup copy of the Global.asax file located in the site root directory.
4. Open Global.asax with a text editor and append these lines to the bottom of the file:
   

   
   <script language="VB" runat="server">
       Sub Session_OnStart()
           Try
               StructuredSolutions.Froogle.ScheduledProductFeed(Server)
           Catch
           End Try
       End Sub
   </script>
         

5. Save the change and close the file.
6. Import the entire SSADDONS folder to the ssl/management folder of your store. This will create a new directory in your store called ssl/management/SSADDONS. If you already have an SSADDONS folder, allow the import to overwrite existing files of the same name, this will add the necessary files to manage Froogle Feed.

Back to top

Getting Started

Load the Froogle Feed configuration page by pointing your browser to the ssl/management/SSADDONS directory, then pick Froogle Feed from the menu. Online help is available to guide you through the process of starting your product feed to Google.

Back to top

Uninstall Instructions

To remove Froogle Feed  from your store, you will need to restore the backup or original copies of Global.asax, and remove the SSADDONS/SSFroogle directory.

1. Copy the backup or original Global.asax to the root directory of your site.
2. Delete the SSFroogle directory in SSADDONS. If this is the only add-on you have from Structured Solutions, then delete the SSADDONS directory also.
3. Delete SSFroogle.dll from the bin directory of your store.  If this is the only add-on you have from Structured Solutions, then delete SSLibrary.dll also.

Back to top

Support

Please see http://support.structured-solutions.net for all support options.

Back to top

Copyright © 2003-2005 by Structured Solutions