By syncing Sh0pSite’s databases with a separate MySQL database, you can be empowered to develop your own functions and applications that use results from querying the product and page info stored there.  These functions can dynamically generate content for your website pages, enabling you to modify what’s shown on your website based on criteria you specify.  This frees up a lot of possibilities to be creative beyond ShopSite’s statically generated pages.  Sorting, price calculations, merchandising messages, real time inventory, breadcrumb navigation, and more become possible.

Beyond website functions, we’ve used this concept to generate data for ShopSite.  For example, when updating or adding large numbers of products based on a file with thousands of items from a manufacturer, you’ll likely want to compare that information with what is already in ShopSite’s database.  Say you want to add a line of new products to your store, maybe 300 items from a supplier’s spreadsheet.  But, you already have some number of them in your store already, and you don’t want to overwrite those items.  By loading the spreadsheet into MySQL, you can query against your store data and generate a feed for ShopSite, excluding items you already have.  Then this feed can be loaded to your store.

We’re about to embark on some more applications for this concept, and will let you know what we come up with.  If you want your ShopSite store synced with MySQL, we can set it up for free for stores hosted with us.