CIO Custom Fields Importer Plugin

TL;DR This plugin enables ongoing data feed to PODS custom fields. Pro version supports all content types of PODS and can look up related item IDs during import.

Are you a business owner looking for an affordable high performance database solution to bring your business to the next level?

Have you got a good looking website but spent too much time keeping the products, articles, blogs, contents accurate and updated?

Are you a developer planning a new high performance website with many records to update frequently, or migrating many contents to WordPress?

CIO Custom Fields Importer is part of the solution you are looking for. It is possibly one of the most useful plugins that business owners, managers, website owners and developers should keep in the tool box, and it can help to create high performance heavy duty content management system (CMS) with automatic data feeding.

CIO Custom Fields Importer is an add-on plugin linking the following two powerful tools together in delivering an efficient and affordable high performance solution for small and medium businesses.

• PODS. PODS is a free, simple, flexible and powerful CMS framework designed for high performance with large data sets. You can use PODS to extend content types with custom fields, or create custom content types of your own. PODS unleashes the power of WordPress in creating highly customised and optimised CMS.

One of the distinct features of PODS is multiple select bi-directional relationship. Suppose you have two custom post types (“author” and “book”), with some books written by a few authors together. You set up multiple select bi-directional field, and in the “book” custom post type you update authors. When you open the “author” custom posts of each author, the books written by the author are automatically displayed. This feature is cool, isn’t it? Especially this is done using a graphical user interface to set up fields and templates without any programming, even by people without programming experience.

• WP All Import. WP All Import is a well developed tool to handle imports from larger XML and CSV files. The free version of WP All Import comes with logging, detection of duplicate records, and templates for future imports and updates, and allows you to import to standard WordPress fields (title, content, slug, categories etc).

The free version of CIO Custom Fields Importer allows you to import to custom fields in custom posts created or extended with PODS. The pro version of CIO Custom Fields Importer enables you to import to all PODS content types (including PODS advanced content types), and content types (objects) created with other plugins, such as

• WordPress users (importing meta fields and assigning role by each usesr)

• WooCommerce customers with meta fields

• WordPress comments

CIO Custom Fields Importer pro version uses WP All Import for data parsing, and PODS API and/or native APIs to import data to fields created by other plugins. Once data has been imported, the import plugins can be deactivated until the next update or import, if the custom fields are created with other plugins. There is no overhead to website performance.

CIO Custom Fields Importer (free and pro version) uses native PODS API to save data, and supports all PODS field types. The free version supports single select relationship fields with known item ids. The pro version handles multiple select fields, and auto matching items on a live site.

Together with Pods and WP All Import, CIO Custom Fields Importer provides a simple and easy way to build a high performance website, import large data sets and manage ongoing updates from external data sources.

Accurate and timely website information is crucial to some professions, such as property developers and real estate agents. Mistakes are costly. With CIO Custom Fields Importer, the principal or person in charge can review information before uploading to the website reducing chances of errors.

If you are a developer, you will LOVE PODS framework for fast delivery of feature rich CMS solutions, and your customers will LOVE you because CIO Custom Fields Importer together with WP All Import saves them hours, days, even years of time accumulatively when they use your system to manage contents. You can also use CIO Custom Fields Importer Professional Edition to import to other contents created with other plugins. This will save you hours even days of development time.

How Does It Work

CIO Custom Fields Importer automatically detects all your custom fields created with PODS and display them in step 3 of WP All Import.

The left side shows all of the custom fields that you can import to and the right side displays the data from your XML/CSV file. Then you can simply drag & drop the data from your XML or CSV into the PODS custom fields to import them.

The CSV or XML can be in any order under any column header, and big files are broken into small chunks to allow importing to shared hosting sites, thanks to the great work by the WP ALL Import team.

CIO Custom Fields Importer is a handy tool for people migrating big volume of data from other sources, or regularly importing and updating data on websites, such as real estate property listing websites, or book keeping databases. Simply create custom content types and fields using PODS for fast development and performance, export data to CSV or XML from your data sources or receive from suppliers/clients/partners, and import into PODS custom fields with ease.

CIO Custom Fields Importer was used on a shared hosting website created with PODS to import 25,000 records in one go successfully.

CIO Custom Fields Importer needs both WP All Import and PODS plugins installed and activated in order to import data. Both WP All Import and PODS are freely available in the plugin repository.

Why you should use the CIO Custom Fields Importer

• Simple, easy, fast and filexible tool to migrate data or regularly import/update data to websites.

• Use native PODS API and support all field types available in PODS.

• Create or update relationship fields with known ID (single select).

• Create or update image and file fields with known ID (single select).

• Import new posts, pages, or custom post types with pods custom fields.

• Support pods custom fields stored in separate tables and meta fields.

• Update pods custom fields for existing posts, pages, or custom post types already published on your site.

• Track imported records to avoid duplicates (feature of WP All Import).

• Import template for future use (feature of WP All Import).

• Compatible with other WP All Import add-ons.

• Actively maintained

The CIO Custom Fields Importer is compatible with PODS (free) and the free version of WP All Import. It can be used along other add-ons for WP All Import.

CIO Custom Fields Importer Professional Edition

The CIO Custom Fields Importer free edition detects and handles importing to pages, posts extended with pods and new custom post types created with pods. It doesn’t handle other content types, such as Advanced Content Types, media, users or comments extended by PODS.

The CIO Custom Fields Importer Professional Edition has the following extra features:

• Handle importing of other pods content types including Advanced Content Types, Comments and Users extended with PODS, in addition to pages, posts and custom post types.

• Automatically search and assign relationship field ids during import to a live website.

• Support bi-directional multiple select relationship import and update on live sites.

• Handle media and file uploads and associate media id with posts, pages or users.

• Support multisites

• Resolve duplicate field name issues.

• Priority support.

CIO Custom Fields Importer Professional Edition comes with

• unlimited site license, you can use it on as many websites as you like, either owned by you or your clients.

• life time free support to fee-paying customers

• life time free upgrade, and 30 day money back guarantee.

• ongoing maintenance. Our team of professional programmers use it to develop high performance database solutions, and will maintain it to be compatible with new versions of WordPress, PODS and WP All Import.

We can also customise the add-on to suit your unique data importing and updating needs, or develop a heavy duty high performance CMS for you.

Upgrade to Professional Edition to access these pro features.

You may also consider upgrading to the professional edition of WP All Import for pro support and the following extra features:

• Import files from a URL: Download and import files from external websites, even if they are password protected with HTTP authentication.

• Cron Job/Recurring Imports: WP All Import Pro can check periodically check a file for updates, and add, edit, delete, and update the your custom fields.

• Custom PHP Functions: Pass your data through custom functions by using [my_function({data[1]})] in your import template. WP All Import will pass the value of {data[1]} through my_function and use whatever it returns.

• Access to pro technical support.

Special thanks to soflyy, wpallimport who have developed WP All Import and made the add-on API available.

PS. The name in this plugin “CIO” stands for Content Import & Optimisation. All right, all right, we know you are thinking it is abbreviation for “Chief Information Officer”. Seriously, any business owners and leaders responsible for business processes, information flow, profit and loss or efficiency of an organisation should have a closer look at these three plugins and work out the savings of time and increase of profitability/efficiency.

Support

We do try to handle support for our free version users at the following e-mail address:

E-mail: [email protected]

Support for free version customers is not guaranteed and based on availability. For pro support, please purchase CIO Custom Fields Importer Pro.

First, install and activate WP All Import and Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields .
If there are issues installing these two plugins, please look for solutions in the support forum or contact the plugin authors.

Then install the CIO Custom Fields Importer. This add-on needs both PODS and WP All Import installed and activated.

To install the CIO Custom Fields Importer, either:

• Upload the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress

• Unzip custom-fields-csv-xml-importer.zip and upload the contents to /wp-content/plugins/, and then activate the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress.

The PODS custom fields will appear in Step 3 of WP All Import. See screenshots for details.

Upgrade to Professional Edition to access pro features, and priority support.

1. 

   Ater installing and activating WP All Import, PODS and CIO Custom Fields Importer Add-on, you will see the menus of PODS and WP All Import. Click on new import, and upload your csv or xml file.

2. 

   In step 3 of WP All Import importing process, PODS custom content types are detected and listed.

3. 

   Drag and Drop your source data fields from the xml or cvs file to the custom fields to import. Your source data fields can use any name, in any order.

4. 

   Specify field to check for duplicate records. (WP All Import feature)

5. 

   Import complete. check log for more information, or run the import again to update (WP All Import feature).

6. 

   Import users (for example WooCommerce customers, premium features of CIO Custom Fields Importer professional edition)

7. 

   Import user (or WooCommerce customer) existing passwords and meta fields such as shipping and billing addresses (premium features of CIO Custom Fields Importer professional edition)

8. 

   Unique field and value to check and prevent duplicate records. If record exists, CIO Custom Fields Importer will update the record rather than creating new records.

9. 

   Importing Pods Advanced Content Type (ACT). (premium features of CIO Custom Fields Importer professional edition)

10. 

    For this example, music record is created as an advanced content type. (premium features of CIO Custom Fields Importer professional edition)

11. 

    Automatically matching records by specifying field name and value. Multiple select and bidirectional relationships are supported. (premium features of CIO Custom Fields Importer professional edition). This feature is useful if you frequently receive hundreds, thousands or more changing records to add to your website. The number of records on your website is growing. You need to import to your running website automatically, but don't always know the item ID, or you want to save time looking for item ids manually.

12. 

    Relationships can also be given here if you know the item ids. Multiple select and bidirectional relationships are supported. This feature is useful if you frequently receive updates to existing records. The number of records in your website does not change frequently, and you only need to update some fields. (premium features of CIO Custom Fields Importer professional edition)

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Installation Instructions

First, install and activate WP All Import and Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields .
If there are issues installing these two plugins, please look for solutions in the support forum or contact the plugin authors.

Then install the CIO Custom Fields Importer. This add-on needs both PODS and WP All Import installed and activated.

To install the CIO Custom Fields Importer, either:

• Upload the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress

• Unzip custom-fields-csv-xml-importer.zip and upload the contents to /wp-content/plugins/, and then activate the plugin from the Plugins page in WordPress.

The PODS custom fields will appear in Step 3 of WP All Import. See screenshots for details.

Upgrade to Professional Edition to access pro features, and priority support.

I am thinking of migrating to WordPress and need a new website. Can you help?

Certainly. We specialise in database migration and development of heavy duty high performance WordPress websites within your budget. Please send an email to [email protected] with a description of your project.

I am a developer. Can I use the professional version of your plugin on my clients’ website?

Absolutely, and even better, for free. CIO Custom Fields Importer Professional Edition comes with unlimited site license and lifetime upgrade and support. You can use it on as many websites as you like, either owned by you or your clients.

Please note we only provide support to customers who have paid a fee to us. If you use it on your clients’ website, you will need to provide support to them. We try to help if we have time and resources available but we prioritise on supporting fee-paying customers.

I am using a plugin to create custom tables and fields. Will your plugin support these custom fields

The free version of CIO Custom Fields Import only supports custom fields created with PODS.

The professional version supports custom fields created with most plugins as long as the custom fields are registered in WordPress.

If the plugin you are using creates its own tables and is not a registered wordpress content type, we can write custom code and use the native API of your plugin to process imported data. A development fee may be applicable depending on complexity of the task.

I installed and activated this plugin, but can’t find out any menu

The add-on needs WP All Import and Pods to work. First verify these two plugins are installed and activated. Create a new import under the menu of All Import, upload a test cvs or xml file, then in step 3, you will see custom fields created with Pods.

I can import some pods, but have issues importing others. the process is killed by the server

Possible causes – please check pods fields settings. Mandatory pods fields must be assigned a value for the import to succeed.

I can’t import into some custom fields created with pods

Possible causes 1 – custom field names shared among pods (resolved since version 1.0.1)

The CIO Custom Fields Importer detects and lists ALL your custom fields created with PODS in one form in step 3 of the import process, even though you are importing ONE pods content type at a time. The custom fields are grouped by pods labels.

If a field name is used in multiple pods, multiple input cells will be generated in the form with the same field name, and only the value of the last input cells (possibly blank by default) will be saved.

To avoid this problem, please try to use unique field name when creating your pods. If you have to use the same field name in multiple pods, then you can drag and drop the value to the last input cell.

Possible causes 2 – custom defined list in relationship field

Please check the custom defined list in your relationship field. The value supplied in the csv or xml file has to be in the custom defined list to be imported.

Possible causes 3 – import settings

If you are running from a previous import template, some custom fields may have been skipped because of the import settings. Please check the import log, or import setting and make sure the custom fields are allowed to import.

I can see a pods content type but can’t import data to the pod

CIO Custom Fields Importer free edition detects and lists all your pods content types however it supports importing and updating of post types only, including new custom post types created with pods, and posts/pages extended with pods.

Please consider upgrading to CIO Custom Fields Importer Pro to import other content types (including Advanced Custom Types and extended Users).

My csv file has many rows, but only the header row is detected

This is probably caused by improperly formatted csv files, such as the CSV files saved by Microsoft Excel. You may try to open the csv files using another spreadsheet program such as the free OpenOffice or LibreOffice, save as a new CSV file and see whether the problem is resolved.

1.0.3

• Included latest add-on library (dated 28 Feb 2017 on github) from wpallimport, to prevent potential issues if it is used together with another add-on plugin.

1.0.1

New features

• logging of custom fields import
• selective importing of custom fields
• improved user interface

Bug fixes:

• Resolved (potential) conflicts of field names

1.0.0

• Initial release on WP.org.