Catalog/WooCommerce setup with Airpress (and i18n)

  • Resolved tomzorz

    (@tomzorz)


    4 years, 11 months ago

    Hi all,

    I’m setting up a new catalog website which should have an almost e-commerce functionality (everything but paying online). All products (about 1500) are in an Airtable base, and should stay there. Each record includes every piece of data, including title and descriptions in three different languages – yes, the website should also be multilingual.

    My question is whether Airpress can support me in achieving to mirror all this data to this kind of wordpress setup, or if I’d be better off writing an own sync plugin which basically just pulls all airtable data to the product post type and its custom fields.

    I’ve been playing around a bit with Airpress and its Virtual Fields. So far, it actually seems doable, but also kind of unnatural since it requires me to read out specific product data by running a shortcode (on the front-end or by do_shortcode programatically). I’m wondering if that could have any repercussions on the run- and loadtime in the end, versus dealing with a custom post type which has all data directly in it.

    Besides that I’m also still to figure out whether this can work together well with a multilangue pluging and optionally also with the WooCommerce plugin – two things that seem to me more doable if I just pull in all data to the product post type, or am I wrong?

    Has anyone played around with a setup like that? Or does the developer have an own advisable strategy about this using Airpress?

    • This topic was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by tomzorz.
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Chester McLaughlin

    (@chetmac)

    Airpress is three things 1) A robust API for fetching and caching Airtable data locally in the WP database (as transients) and 2) A set of deeply integrated WP hooks that allow that data to be presented as a page. 3) A set of simplistic shortcodes that provide a way to display (and even loop) data in the post editor.

    The type of integration you’re describing would require a custom plugin that utilizes the #1 Airpress Feature (robust API) to map Airtable Records and Fields into WordPress (and Woocommerce) Posts and Fields. This will be a highly customized process based on your own particular Airtable base structure and workflow requirements.

    I have done several such integrations and they are sufficiently complex, however Airpress will at least help carry the (significant) burden of talking to Airtable.

    One ‘gotcha’ that I run into is that wp_cron isn’t reliable when using WP Engine or other heavily cached setups. So if you’re relying on wp_cron to execute the synchronization you’ll want to setup an actual cron script to “power” wp_cron.

    Thread Starter tomzorz

    (@tomzorz)

    Thanks for the thorough reply!
    At the current stage it suffices to have that info.

    As soon as we hit the stage of actual developing, could I contact you in some way to discuss this and potentially hire you for a custom plugin based on Airpress?

    Plugin Author Chester McLaughlin

    (@chetmac)

    Sure. https://chetmac.com/contact

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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