Duplicate item (225 errors)
Your feed contains non-unique items. These items will be dropped.
Examples: Examples:
Item Nr.
12
15
16
17
71
The duplicate error is a real issue with VirtueMart and Google Base. Its not because the same product is in multiple categories (although that doesn't help), its because it detects a "similar" product in the list with slight differences.
For example
- Red Hand knit wool jumper
- Blue Hand knit wool jumper
- Green Hand knit wool jumper
They are all the same item, just in different colours. So they should actually be entered as one item, but with different color attributes.
This is also the same for sizes as well, such as
This is not possible in Virtuemart, as they haven't added a "color" or "size" attribute field. Virtuemart has got a general "attribute" field, but as it is not specified for a specific reason, then it is used for all sorts such as if you were selling a computer then you could put it as
- Apple iMac 27"
- 250GB Hard Drive
- 500GB Hard Drive
- 1TB Hard Drive
This means we can not relate the Virtuemart attribute field to the size or color attributes in the product. So the only way we can do this is by adding the color and size attributes in the Joomla Google Base component.
You have always been able to add in a size or color into the product through the JGB component, but from V6.0 you can now add in multiple entries per product.
- Color - 10 sizes per product
- Size - 30 sizes per product.
So for each product you can add in all the colors and sizes you have it available to one product.
So now you have set all your products set up correctly, you need to unpublish the other "Similar" products from the feed. So in the Joomla Google Base component, you can now unpublish the item, so it stays live in the website, but will not be added to the XML feed and uploaded to Google Base.
This will stop duplicate errors, I know it is time consuming, but I have worked with thousands of Virtuemart Shop owners over the last 5yrs, and have tried to find the best solution possible for this and can not find a better way. If you can think of a way that will work for all users of the plug-in, please let me know, as I am always trying to improve user friendliness.
Regards
Ian |
