Importing Product Featured Images – CSV or Upload

Please use support.woothemes.com for CSV import issues so someone can look into your install.

I’ve just tried that link Mike and have registered, however it’s telling me that I can’t open a support ticket as I don’t have any paying subscriptions – it’s the free CSV import tool I’ve been trying to use.

Ok, I’m not familiar with that one. You should use it’s forum.

It’s still from Woo Themes, just the free version without the premium features.

I’ve also tried a few alternative CSV import plugins, and I’m getting the same result with all of them – no obvious errors, the image appears to have imported correctly according to the log however it does not show up in the media library.

Have checked that permissions are set correctly for the /wp-content/uploads directory. It appears to be something to do with the WP or server config rather than any specific plugin issue as I’m getting the same with all of the import plugins, which is why I’ve posted here as it appears to be more of a generic issue – no doubt something I’ve missed or not set up correctly, but I can’t see what.

Cheers,

what do you mean? I am not aware of a free version… link?

Apologies, I’ve looked at so many different sites today trying to resolve this that I confused myself. I thought it was Woothemes, but it’s not the one I was originally trying was just called CSV Import by Allaerd.

I’ve also since tried WP All Import with the Woocommerce plugin, with exactly the same result – the import apparently completes successfully but the images are not imported.

This is what leads me to believe it’s something else to do with the config, not specific issue to the plugin I’m trying to use, as all import plugins seem to give me the same result.

Cheers,

Sounds possible. Where are the images coming from exactly? Whats in your CSV?

They’re just hosted on another web server (my supplier), the CSV contains a direct link to the image file on the remote server. If I follow the link in a browser then the image file loads as it should. Likewise if I use the WP ALL IMPORT plugin which has a preview facility the image previews correctly.

Maybe raise this with WP ALL Import. I wonder if the request is somehow being blocked, or your uploads directory is not writable.

I’ve raised with WP All Import and Allaerd to see whether either can shed any light, just waiting to hear back from them.

I’m fairly sure it’s not permissions, as I’ve tried every combination of perms on the wp-content/uploads directory – and I can upload directly by creating a product manually or via the media library, so presumably something is blocking the request. Nothing is logged anywhere though, it’s as if the upload goes through successfully, just minus the actual file haha.

I’ll keep playing today, see if I can get anywhere. It’s definitely something in my config, as I’ve just tried using the WP All Import testing server and the images upload fine – so I know the issue isn’t with the CSV or the remote server, it’s config somewhere. ??

The author of WP All Import has come back to me, however unfortunately he’s not been a great deal of help – his suggestion was that I manually upload the images to the server, and then use the CSV import to link to them instead.

With thousands of lines, and images which aren’t stored or named appropriately, that would take weeks to manually download and upload them all and then recreate the CSV.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated – I know it’s got to be a config issue of some kind as the images upload fine on their testing server, and I’ve previously used the same CSV to import from the same links into another WP website without any issues.

Without access to your server for debugging, I cannot really say. You’d have to look at logs to see whats going on.

Thanks for getting back to me, you’re the only person who is!

I was just about to ask whether you’d consider taking a look for me if I gave you access to the server etc. Naturally would have been happy to pay for your time.

However I had a bit of a brainwave (rare occurrence, haha) and tried replacing the image URL’s in a sample of my CSV data with images hosted elsewhere entirely, and they imported exactly as they should do – so the issue appears to be at my suppliers end with their server blocking my servers attempts to download the images. Strange as I can access them individually by URL from the same server, but not as part of the upload.

I’ve asked the supplier to check whether/why they are blocking the requests, and will report back if it solves the problem.