Successfully adding images to your listings via the Bulk Uploader can be tricky if you're not familiar with the process and with all the available options. Continue reading for helpful explanations that should speed you on your way!

You can select between two methods of bulk uploading images, Better Quality and Faster. The Better Quality setting causes images to be downloaded to the local server and have processing performed on them, including resizing them according to the main software's specified dimensions, and creating thumbnails. By contrast, when using the Faster method, images are "hotlinked" from their existing locations, and not scanned for validation/sizing until first requested for viewing in an actual listing. Better Quality will prefer a consistent appearance, while Faster is useful in some applications that require images that are either very many or very large.

When using the "Better Quality" upload method, the uploader accepts image references as either fully-qualified URLs (e.g. http://mysite.com/images/an_image.jpg ) or local server paths (e.g. /var/www/html/user_images/this_image.jpg ). For "Faster"-type uploads, only fully-qualified URLs will work.

The basic use-case is to assign each URL or path to a numbered Image URL column, as in Image URL 1 and Image URL 2, but there are a couple of other options that may help in some cases

The Images [List] column selection comma-separated list of images that will be given the lowest-available slots. This should be used when all the image paths in your source CSV file are contained within a single column, e.g. "myTitle","myDescription","http://example.com/1.jpg,http://example.com/2.jpg,http://example.com/3.jpg","myLocation"

You can specify a "base" path to your images in one of two locations. DO NOT USE THEM BOTH. Those places are either the "Base Image Path" setting on Step 1 of the upload process, or by setting a column of the upload data to be the "Base Image URL" on Step 2. The Step 1 path setting applies to EVERY listing in the source file, while the Step 2 base url setting may be different for each listing. Here are some examples of ways the two settings can both be useful:

<tip c h>

• Base Image Path (Step 1): "http://example.com/images/"
• Listing 1 "Base Image URL": NONE!
• Listing 1 "Image List:" "mypic1.jpg,mypic2.jpg,mypic3.jpg"
• Listing 2 "Base Image URL": NONE!
• Listing 2 "Image List:" "mypic4.jpg,mypic5.jpg,mypic6.jpg"

</tip>

<tip c h>

• Base Image Path (Step 1): NONE!
• Listing 1 "Base Image URL": "http://example.com/images/"
• Listing 1 "Image List:" "mypic1.jpg,mypic2.jpg,mypic3.jpg"
• Listing 2 "Base Image URL": "http://example.net/media/pictures/"
• Listing 2 "Image List:" "yourpic24.jpg,yourpic67.jpg,yourpic48.jpg"

</tip>

If you encounter errors when using Better Quality upload type, they may be due to attempting to Bulk Upload images that are too large or too numerous for the Bulk Uploader to be able to download in the time allotted. In that case, you may need to adjust your server's PHP settings to allow more processing time, or you may need to adjust the images you're attempting to load to make them smaller. If making such adjustments is not possible, consider using the Faster image upload type, or doing a Multi-part Upload.