Anyone using Wordpress to post vehicle inventory?

[JR1980]

We just bought a Wordpress design for our site, but quickly realized trying to publish our inventory is going to be rather difficult. Currently, we have our inventory going through Homenet but we wanted to create a more robust site that looked a little nicer--no offense Homenet

So now we are stumped on what to do. The theme we purchased said it was easily able to update your inventory with "one click" and even their support said you would be able to update it quickly with an XML feed. However, it appears that the XML "feed" is rather a file that you manually have to update each time through the WP back end.

All of our inventory is in a CSV file and had a programmer create us something that transforms that into a XML feed with a URL, sort of like a sitemap but only with our inventory data.

ANY suggestions on what to do?

Thanks in advance

 

[kcar]

I spent 24 months researching this..

DealerTrends, Wordpress inventory plug-in. Mike is a great guy. cardealerpress.com

Or..

I contacted 120+ web development firms and freelancers, to get it working myself it's a complete nightmare.. You're looking at MIN $30-40K to get this done, PLUS good luck finding someone who wants to or knows how to do it. 90% of the people I spoke with had no idea how to do it and were just put off by it, or were trying to fake it as they go and figure it out. And this is for a BASIC wordpress plug-in, nothing fancy. You have to really find a damn good freelancer, which is nearly impossible, or spend a ton of money at a firm. And the time needed to do this, lol! Even I don't want to do it myself, its a pain and I love web development.

 

[Christine Rochelle]

Check out the Car Port App - Car Port App | Portable Car Inventory - pulls in your inventory through an RSS feed. You add 1 Wordpress plugin and then you add 1 line of code (the RSS feed) and you can customize it every time you add it. Really simple and each inventory thumbnail that shows up is considered by Google as a link back to that VDP page, so it is SEO friendly too.

 

[JR1980]

I spent 24 months researching this..

DealerTrends, Wordpress inventory plug-in. Mike is a great guy. cardealerpress.com

I've heard about that, but trying not to have to pay any more than we currently already are. Looks like this will get costly VERY quickly for something rather "simple" we were trying to do. I'd really like to have something where we have 100% control over our site. Days of letting someone else manage it are done with, to many headaches and to much costs, but looks like we're running out of options.

Or..

I contacted 120+ web development firms and freelancers, to get it working myself it's a complete nightmare.. You're looking at MIN $30-40K to get this done, PLUS good luck finding someone who wants to or knows how to do it. 90% of the people I spoke with had no idea how to do it and were just put off by it, or were trying to fake it as they go and figure it out. And this is for a BASIC wordpress plug-in, nothing fancy. You have to really find a damn good freelancer, which is nearly impossible, or spend a ton of money at a firm. And the time needed to do this, lol! Even I don't want to do it myself, its a pain and I love web development.

I asked around and got a few quotes for someone to make a plugin to developing some tool for WP. I don't have a problem paying for it as it might be worth the cost, but the GM/Owner isn't willing to foot the bill for anymore costs.

The only problem I have with having someone develop a plug-in is they will turn around and sell it. One said he will give us a "discount" because then he will create a site to resell the product. In this case, I'm not looking to be an investor for his business where I get 0%

Have a few other last options I'm going to explore, then back to the drawling board, but updating MANUALLY, that's just insane!

 

[kcar]

I've heard about that, but trying not to have to pay any more than we currently already are. Looks like this will get costly VERY quickly for something rather "simple" we were trying to do. I'd really like to have something where we have 100% control over our site. Days of letting someone else manage it are done with, to many headaches and to much costs, but looks like we're running out of options.

As would I, but at the end of the day $250/month for a website is cheap compare to what every other dealer is paying. Savings are huge when it's owned which is the reason why I wanted to do it myself... I'm a DIY person, for everything and I refuse to use vendors at all costs. While other dealers were content spending thousands of $$ with vendors, I manged to save $60,000 this year and grow an extra 1,700+ leads and the years not even over with yet. I can see your frustration, sometimes if you want real results, you need to do it yourself. Vendors can be good for somethings though.. I consider Cardealerpress worth it, only because Mike offers great support, even let me test it out (still working with it), and he's working for the dealers with new products, not trying to make as much cash as possible off them.

I asked around and got a few quotes for someone to make a plugin to developing some tool for WP. I don't have a problem paying for it as it might be worth the cost, but the GM/Owner isn't willing to foot the bill for anymore costs.

Yeah that's was one of my earlier problems was getting that cash upfront. But after showing the savings year after year, it took awhile but now I have control. Most DP's and GMs are afraid of you leaving and them being $xxxxx deep into a project they have no idea how to manage since they own it. But in time, they'll get over it as you progress.. I couldn't get the owner to let me run a Wordpress site, even though it meant $15K/year savings, but finally progressed to doing it, and now we're saving boat loads of cash. Again I feel your pain.

The only problem I have with having someone develop a plug-in is they will turn around and sell it. One said he will give us a "discount" because then he will create a site to resell the product. In this case, I'm not looking to be an investor for his business where I get 0% Have a few other last options I'm going to explore, then back to the drawling board, but updating MANUALLY, that's just insane!

Yeah avoid that at all costs. It's your plug-in it should not be resold. If I'm spending $xxxxx on a custom plug-in/website I'm sure as hell going to own it. For SEO reasons, if someone else is using the exact same format and pages, it will affect your site one way or another.. But good luck, I would die updating manually.. lol.

Also be careful there are A LOT of shady companies/freelancers out there, even ones with legit websites that pick up the phone and seem great, etc. But best of luck, at some point you'll get it all worked out.

 

[yagoparamo]

We offer a free WP inventory plug in, it is robust, we use it for our own microsites and we have over 3,000 of them built.

Only problem is that you need to use our inventory system rather than homenet. HN is a great system, but we have also been in the inventory arena since 1995 (the beginning!). We have a pretty good system too.

 

[JR1980]

We offer a free WP inventory plug in, it is robust, we use it for our own microsites and we have over 3,000 of them built.

Only problem is that you need to use our inventory system rather than homenet. HN is a great system, but we have also been in the inventory arena since 1995 (the begging!). We have a pretty good system too.

I've heard of your program from someone else and wanted to give it a try but not sure all that's involved. Can you tell me or message me the pricing? As well, how hard is it to migrate Homenet data? My boss isn't going to want to drop them regardless, so if this is feasible, this may work!

 

[yagoparamo]

I've heard of your program from someone else and wanted to give it a try but not sure all that's involved. Can you tell me or message me the pricing? As well, how hard is it to migrate Homenet data? My boss isn't going to want to drop them regardless, so if this is feasible, this may work!

$399/month for a tool just like Homenet (but better!). My multiple image uploaded is not as good as HN but on the other hand we have lots and lots of tools in the system that HN doesn't have.

You can keep using HN and feed into us then use our tool to feed into the WP plugin.

 

[ibdefaria]

Today WP can accomplish anything. You can have the back-end completely customized to add any type of data. So as long you have someone that knows WP you should be good. Here's a dealership website running in WP

Premier Motor Group | Used Cars Inventory

Pretty basic, but it doesn't look like a blog.

 

[kcar]

Today WP can accomplish anything. You can have the back-end completely customized to add any type of data. So as long you have someone that knows WP you should be good. Here's a dealership website running in WP

Premier Motor Group | Used Cars Inventory

Pretty basic, but it doesn't look like a blog.

Yeah... But any dealer can do that. That's the easy part. The hard part that people struggle with is getting the data feeds setup, working with the inventory management system (every needs vin decoding/specs/etc), getting wordpress to auto add/delete cars as the data feed is updated, etc.. If you're a small dealership and you want to go manual it's a cake walk, but if you're trying to keep up with 500 cars a month it's just impossible..