Integrating inventory into my website

[craigh]

"it can be prevented if you know what you're doing"

@craigh that's the key, right?

100%
and vendors that use Wordpress typically have a guy on staff who is responsible for that stuff.
What concerns me is dealers spinning up their own Themeforest theme (that never gets updates) on a Wordpress install on some shared hosting platform. That almost always ends badly.

 

[amirxl]

100%
and vendors that use Wordpress typically have a guy on staff who is responsible for that stuff.
What concerns me is dealers spinning up their own Themeforest theme (that never gets updates) on a Wordpress install on some shared hosting platform. That almost always ends badly.

And that's why I'm staying away from "Automotive Themes" on TF and just using our standard multipurpose theme. I remember CarDealerPress even suggesting to use a standard Genesis theme and build your way up.

 

[Alexander Lau]

This conversation again, aren't there 20 other threads on Wordpress Themes absorbing inventory feeds?

 

[craigh]

Alexander, I will continue preaching my religion until there are none left to convert

 

[Ryan Everson]

When we had our own custom in-house Wordpress website we used the WP All Import plugin to import our inventory feed into a custom post type that was utilizing the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. Getting the inventory on the site was the easy part though, where we ran into issues was with the search results page and search filtering.

Honestly you're better off going with a proven wordpress website provider like Dealer Inspire that offers you the flexibility of Wordpress but without all of the inventory related headaches.

 

[Alexander Lau]

100%
and vendors that use Wordpress typically have a guy on staff who is responsible for that stuff.
What concerns me is dealers spinning up their own Themeforest theme (that never gets updates) on a Wordpress install on some shared hosting platform. That almost always ends badly.

Yes, we definitely have commented and agreed on this in the past. Holy cow, if you download a Themeforest automotive theme, who do you think is going to support it? You cannot rely on a 3rd party developer (you don't even know) to do that. Now, you might be able buy the theme off of him for a high price and find a dedicated WP team, but that's costly.

 

[Alexander Lau]

When we had our own custom in-house Wordpress website we used the WP All Import plugin to import our inventory feed into a custom post type that was utilizing the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. Getting the inventory on the site was the easy part though, where we ran into issues was with the search results page and search filtering.

Honestly you're better off going with a proven wordpress website provider like Dealer Inspire that offers you the flexibility of Wordpress but without all of the inventory related headaches.

Precisely or any other automotive website providers using WordPress. Such as:

• You mentioned DI: http://www.dealerinspire.com/
• Steering Innovation - http://www.steeringinnovation.com/
• Dealer Lead Driver - http://dealerleaddriver.com/ (Potratz bough them)
• Dealer X - http://www.dealerx.com/
• DealerTrend - http://www.dealertrend.com & http://cardealerpress.com/
• AutoRevo - http://www.autorevo.com/ May Not Have Launched Yet
• Fox Dealer - http://www.foxdealer.com/
• For Canadian Dealers: eDealer - http://www.edealer.ca/

 

[yagoparamo]

Alex all of those are great examples for franchise dealers; there guys have a good system for independents, special finance, blogs, or project sites.

$99


http://ignitionids.com

 

[jawaid]

Old thread, but it's asking the exact question a lot of independent dealers still have, so figured it's worth answering properly for whoever finds it next.

Quick disclosure: I built a WordPress plugin for this, so take it as a vendor's answer.

Jack's original problem — editing a local file and re-uploading it every time a car sells or arrives — is exactly what automated feed sync exists to fix. The WordPress recommendation later in the thread was right, but the missing piece is: WordPress doesn't do that sync on its own, you need something reading your feed on a schedule and translating it into vehicle listings.

That's what Automotive Inventory Importer does — point it at your DMS or export feed (XML or CSV, any provider, as long as it's a flat feed), map the fields once, and it keeps itself current: new vehicles added, changed ones updated, sold ones removed, no manual file handling ever again.

Free version caps at 25 vehicles, which is plenty to test against a real feed before spending anything: Car Dealer Inventory Sync For WordPress — Any DMS Feed

Happy to answer technical questions if anyone still running a small dealer site on their own hosting wants specifics.