Download ECI Version 6.1.2
It has been 10 days since the last version, before those 10 days I had users requesting features or asking for improvements in specific areas and since 10 days ago I’ve had more customers. All of which have asked for very unique features. If you have discussed your site with me recently and I’ve agreed to add features to the plugin the chances are they are not in it yet. It took most of the 10 days to make big improvements into automatic data updating and post updating plus add the new ability to use multiple files in one project.
Main Change Is Multi-File Projects
This to me and many of you will be impressive. The ability to select more than one csv file and import all the data to a single table. It is easy considering what it does but the user (you) still need to have some degree of knowledge about how these things work. There will not be a lot of documentation for a while but I will try to get some videos out soon. Until then please visit and ask questions on the forum.
The main thing to know is that you cannot have duplicate column names in each of the csv files without losing one or more of the duplicate columns. MySQL can only use the same column title once.
All Changes
- Updating: a lot of improvement to updating, we still need to run tests to determine how active the plugin is and avoid creating too much work for the blog. Please feedback to me if you notice a constant amount of entries in the log however this should not happen. You can enter the event delay period in your projects selected speed profile, minutes, hours or even days can be added in terms of seconds. If you want to run tests simply enter a value of 10 seconds and refresh the page every 10 seconds to see what happens.
- Integration Page: this new page in the plugin is where I’ll suggest plugins and themes that work well with Easy CSV Importer. Eventually we’ll use it to collaborate so that we can continue to make Easy CSV Importer not only compatible with premium solutions but also provide more tools in ECI to them easier to work with.
- Example/Featured Project Page: two purposes for this. I expect many visits to the feature sites through the plugin especially when the free edition is updated with this. So one of the purposes of this page is to help you get some extra traffic to your site. Most sites made using Easy CSV Importer are new so I know every bit of traffic helps. The other purpose for this page is to show what you have done using Easy CSV Importer and support the plugin by proving its ability. I say this a lot, it is in your best interest to support the plugin and the plugins history shows that I put endless effort into improving it. Another few months from now and it will be a different plugin by the time I’m finished plus more support services are coming.
- Troubleshooting Page: this page has an iframe that displays a blog post for troubleshooting. I thought it would save time to keep the blog post updated without having to also update the plugins own page. If for any reason you do not see the WebTechGlobal site within the iframe simply do a Google Search for Easy CSV Importer Troubleshooting.
- Tutorial Page: someone recently suggested I should not make people go looking for the video tutorials. So I’ve added a tutorials page which only has the introduction on it right now. I plan to make new tutorials and I’ll those to this page rather than the older ones.
- Various other well thought out improvements to code and the interface to help make things clearer.
Coming In Version 6.1.3
As mentioned above some interesting features have been requested. They will be worked on as priority as they have been paid for. Here is what I’ll be adding over the next week.
- Similar Item Short Code: we’ve all seen websites the offer up similar items or items purchased by people who also bought what you are looking at. I’ll be creating a short code and system to make this happen using the data stored for your project or other posts. I’m predicting various methods will be required for different results. This feature will be improved to be intelligent, remembering products already viewed by visitor, products already offered and offering up other items instead. When I say products it is simply because most import done is affiliate data but this feature could be handy for any other site. The shortcode will allow the resulting items to be displayed anywhere in a post. How styling will be managed is something to be decided later.
- Similar Item Sidebar Widget: same as above but in the sidebar.
- Post Tag Relationship Button: we can already had tags and when you click a tag it opens up all other posts using the same term. What if we want to be able to click and go straight to a single post instead? Well that is the idea behind this feature. It will display a button that will say something such as “Read More”. It will be automatically linked to a post with the exact same title as the term applied to the shortcode that will create this button. There is a soldier out there who is doing a bit of website building in his spare time and he is using holiday destinations to create a site which will offer up resorts. On each resort will be the button I’ve mentioned and when that button is clicked the user will be taking to a post all about the destination/country/region. The key thing here is to allow the visitor to then continue to the affiliate page for the original resort they viewed after reading about the destination. I’ll need to figure out the best approach. Oh and has anyone got a better name for this?
- Store Images Locally: this will simply be the option for the plugin to add images to your WordPress media. A copy of the image will be stored locally meaning that using this feature will create a lot more work for your blog while you create posts using Easy CSV Importer. The user who has requested this recently has around 12 images per post, that is an exceptional amount of images per post but it is required for the product he is selling.
- ClassiPress: someone tried to use dynamic image urls with ClassiPress but WordPress does not generate the thumbnail that ClassiPress needs when using dynamic urls. I hope to using the local image storage feature that is coming to get around this problem. I also want the ClassiPress new custom post type for ads to automatically be applied to the project settings in Easy CSV importer.
I’m hoping this takes a week to complete but the dynamic url issue with ClassiPress and storing images locally might throw up some issues. I’ll give myself 2 weeks and any other free time I have within that period I will get some tutorials made covering all the new features.
If you are interesting in hiring me please contact me about a week into May.