I have products that I relist multiple times – either after a sale, or after the auction ends without a sale.
I bought GarageSale so that I could keep the auction templates for these products on my computer indefinitely, and quickly relist whenever desired.
But I’m discovering trouble with the image gallery in this scenario: When I first create a template and add images, I use GS’s “Add Image File…” option, grabbing the images from my hard drive. This works fine for the first time I submit an auction.
But when I relist the auction later using the template saved in GarageSale, only the first gallery image shows up at the top of the listing. The other 11 images are not shown. Further down, where the images would appear in the description, there are just “missing image” icons for the 11 images.
I understand that ebay only uses gallery images that have been uploaded to their EPS server during creation of the auction. This works fine the first time I use a template. But the problem seems to be that, once an auction begins, my template somehow gets modified to reflect the Ebay EPS URLs of the gallery images that were assigned the first time I created the auction. This is fine for the first time using a template, but afterward, the Ebay EPS images are deleted at the end of the auction, so when I go to use the template again to relist the auction, GS apparently submits these old URLs that no longer exist. How can I keep GarageSale from doing this?
Why wouldn’t GS just grab the images from my computer again, like it did when I created the template, and then upload fresh copies to Ebay EPS? Is there a setting somewhere to force GS to do this? I understand there may be a workaround by storing my images somewhere offsite, but I’d really rather not do that. And I certainly don’t want to have to do a bunch of updates on the template each time I want to re-use them. If that is required, what is the point of a template? It should remain unchanged permanently so that it can be used quickly.
GarageSale supposes eBay keeps images around for a certain period in time after their listing ends.
So, if you are going to re-list an item that you have previously uploaded using GarageSale, its images will only be uploaded if GarageSale believers they are no longer stored by eBay.
Most likely eBay changed the time the are keeping images around, and GarageSale wrongly believes it doesn’t need to upload them. We’ll see how we can best address this issue.
Having said that, can you please post a link to your original listing on eBay and the one you were trying to re-list? Also what version of GarageSale have you been using for listing and relisting? 6 or 7?
P.S. I took the liberty of inserting a few line-breaks in your original post. Makes it easier to read and understand.
We still don’t have any idea why your images won’t display after a revise, but we have added an extra check to verify that your images still exists on eBay’s images server using them in list or re-list operation. If you have the time, please give this version a try and let us know, if the missing image problems have gone away:
Below is an explanation of the attached screenshots. I am using version
6.9.7.
GS_template_01: Template in edit mode, showing the main image, and then the
other images that I want to appear in the gallery. Note also the design
³Ebay grey² and the selection of ³Images Right,² meaning that the gallery
images should also appear in the body of the listing.
GS_template_02: This shows the window that pops up when I double-click on
one of the gallery images (not the first image, but any others). It shows
the original ebay URL that will soon prove to be outdated.
GS_preview_01: In the preview, we can see that the first image will be fine,
but all the others are not showing up. (NOTE: The preview will sometimes
show all the images, but the actual auction will not!).
GS_preview_02: The preview also shows the images are missing from the body
of the auction (Again, though, sometimes the preview shows them, but actual
auction does not.)
I need to be able to set these templates ONCE, and then use them forever
without changing anything about the images or anything else. Having the
gallery images uploaded every time I reuse the template would be ideal.
In GS templates, edit mode, on the image bar, to the left of the images,
there is the set of 4 buttons, one of which is ³Mark the selected image as
gallery image.²
When NONE of the images has this feature applied to it, GS seems to handle
the location of all the images differently, versus when one of the images
has this feature applied.
Can you explain how this works?
Also, what does this setting actually do in the auction? I don¹t understand
what the difference is between being marked as a gallery image versus not.
Aren¹t they all gallery images automatically?