Hi,
I currently have a price comparison website that uses a centralized database created from the product feeds of about 200 merchants (about 2 million products) from here in the US. The feeds are processed at night and it takes about 2 hours.
Does your product have a way of automating the process of data collection and can your product handle that volume of data?
The database is proprietary and I wish to now house my own using the feeds of the same merchants.
The website is www.pic-n-save.com and we are a price comparison portal. Customers enter information into the search bar and the software extracts the information, formats it and displays it in a logical manner.
Does that sound doable using your product?
Thank You,
John
Hi John,
Yes - Price Tapestry can be automated - and many users do just this as it is the easiest way to keep on top of your site and keep the content fresh. Included in the distribution are a number of scripts designed to help you setup an "Automation Script" - a process that will run on your server every night (or as required) that first downloads the latest feeds and then runs the import process.
The documentation for these scripts is here:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/6
With regards to actually creating your automation script, there's information on that here:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/198
The product volumes you talk about are certainly do-able, but bear in mind that Price Tapestry is limited only by the capabilities of your hardware - there are no limits imposed by the script at all. Please see the following thread for discussion on setting up Price Tapestry for a very large site:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/732
Having looked at your existing site, you may find it more appropriate to use the "sub-directory" installations trick. As it stands, Price Tapestry does not support a category hierarchy - there just isn't the quality of data in the majority of product feeds to support it. What some users do, however, is create multiple installations of Price Tapestry in sub-directories per master category. The following thread has discussion on doing this:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/205
Ultimately, the functionality of the script is what you can see at WebPriceCheck.co.uk (the demo site), so anything additional to this would have to be coded separately, although it is worth checking the forum as there are many mods and enhancements complete with example code...!
Cheers,
David.