Today in just under the span of under 5 hours I was able to add cast names to nearly 10,000 DVDs!
These are for titles added from 2002 to December 2023 ONLY. All newer titles already had cast names.
Doing this manually would have taken me 166 hours total if I updated one product per minute.
I had no data from a backup database to get the data from.
With the help of AI (to show me how!) I was able to do the following, which is so cool:
- Extract data to a CSV spreadsheet file from my old HTML only based site that used table cells. I did this with “python” and a script.
- Clean up the CSV and get the SKU fields to match up with what’s in my current database.
- I was also able to change old product IDs from ABC001 to ABC-001 format
If any of you don’t know, I used to run this site from 2002 to December 2023 with HTML only and no database for data storage for cast names etc.
I used Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. People these days no longer use software like that and use a CMS (Content Management System).
My old shopping cart provider stopped working in late 2023 and I was forced to start over from scratch. I tried forever to get them to fix their issues without any luck. In the end, this was kind of a blessing in disguise. It forced me to learn how to use a new E-commerce software (what we’re using today).
Luckily back then I was able to keep every single DVD on the site.
What went missing? Every review, screenshot, actress names etc. I had no way to import it. It was all HTML.
Adding that manually would have taken me months of working on it daily for 8 hours per day.