A shopping channel rejects a product and does not really tell you why. The usual advice is\nto open Merchant Center once a week and work through the diagnostics tab. That means you\nfind out after the rejection, and a rejected product sells nothing in the meantime.<\/p>\n\n
This plugin runs those checks in your own shop instead, before anything is sent. It does two\nthings, in the order that actually helps.<\/p>\n\n
First it tells you what is wrong.<\/strong> Thirty-five checks against what the shopping channels\nask for, run over your real products, sorted by whether the problem stops your whole shop,\nstops one product, or just costs you position. Ten products with no barcode become one line\nthat says so, with links to three of them.<\/p>\n\n Then it builds the feed.<\/strong> For channels that read an address, you get an address to paste\nin. For channels that ask you to upload the file yourself, you get the file. Products with a\nblocking problem are left out rather than sent broken, because a feed full of rejects gets\nthe whole shop marked down, including the products that were fine.<\/p>\n\n A barcode with one digit mistyped is worse than no barcode at all. It looks right on your\nproduct screen, it passes an \"is this field filled in\" test, and the channel silently\nfails to match it. From the outside nothing appears to be wrong, so there is nothing\nprompting you to look.<\/p>\n\n This plugin does the arithmetic. A GTIN, UPC, EAN or ISBN carries a check digit calculated\nfrom the digits before it, so a mistyped code can be caught before it costs you anything.\nIt also catches the commonest version of the mistake: a thirteen digit code with the last\ndigit dropped, which still looks like a valid twelve digit one.<\/p>\n\n Be clear about what this can and cannot know. The channels separate a code that is invalid<\/em>,\nmeaning the arithmetic does not come out, from one that is incorrect<\/em>, meaning the arithmetic\nis fine but the code belongs to a different product. Arithmetic finds the first. Only the\nmanufacturer's own records can settle the second, so no plugin should claim to.<\/p>\n\n A shop with twenty thousand products cannot be checked inside one page load, and a screen\nthat dies halfway is worse than a slow one. The check runs in pieces with a progress bar,\nand each piece hands back well inside what your host allows. The feed is written to a\nworking file and swapped into place only when it is whole, so a channel reading at that\nmoment gets the previous feed or the new one, never half of either.<\/p>\n\n The shopping channels change what they ask for. Those requirements live in a signed rule\nfile the plugin fetches once a day, so a change on their side does not wait for a plugin\nrelease. Every file is checked against a signature made with a key that is not in this\nplugin, refused if it is older than the one already in use, and refused if it describes\nanything the plugin does not already know how to do. If any of that fails, or the server\ncannot be reached, your shop carries on with the rules it already had.<\/p>\n\n This plugin connects to one service, run by the plugin author, to keep its list of channel\nrequirements current.<\/p>\n\n The plugin works without this service. Every release carries a full copy of the rules, and a\nshop that never reaches the service keeps using the copy it already has. Nothing is sent to\nit, so there is no data of yours to opt out of.<\/p>\n\n The plugin does not contact the shopping channels themselves. Feeds are built inside your\nshop; you decide who reads them.<\/p>\n\n\n No plugin can. Those channels admit merchants themselves, and at the time of writing not\nevery shop is eligible. What this does is get your product data into the shape they ask for\nand build the file, so that when you apply you are not turned down for the data.<\/p><\/dd>\n No. It reads your shop and reports. Every fix is something you do yourself, on your own\nproduct screens.<\/p><\/dd>\n The check runs in pieces and shows progress. Each piece stops well before your host would.<\/p><\/dd>\nBarcode check digits<\/h4>\n\n
What it checks<\/h4>\n\n
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What it will never do<\/h4>\n\n
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Built for a real catalogue<\/h4>\n\n
Keeping up without updating<\/h4>\n\n
External services<\/h3>\n\n
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Does this put my products on ChatGPT?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
Will it change my products?<\/h3><\/dt>\n
My shop has thousands of products. Will this time out?<\/h3><\/dt>\n