My developer is telling me this can't be done, I would like a 2nd opintion

I’ll try to keep this short and simple if possible

Company currently has a WordPress site using woo commerce with goals to migrate to shopify. It’s 90% completed but now my designer has hit a hurdle.

I’m wondering if you could shed some options to achieve what I need.

We are a company that manufactures products, we have about 3000 products. Our products contain chemical compounds which need to be reported to the end user via SDS sheets . Each of the 3000 products has a unique product sheet along with a unique technical sheet, there are also translated in several languages.

To distribute these important sheets, we provide them to the public, via product specific page which has 3 download links depending on the sheet required.

To create this product page, I had an app designer create an app for me to do so. Using our product database I export a list of names and product codes for all our 3000+ products, I then upload this CSV file into the custom app. The app will then generate an individual html page for each product on the csv sheet.

The newly generated 3000+ HTML pages are then uploaded via FTP to the website public directory (this is updated 2-3 times a year for new products) When a user launches one of these pages (often by qr distributed code or direct link, which I personally email them) they are displayed with the available datasheets for this specific product and they can then download the PDF datasheets for this item (all links on the page link to the corresponding datasheet) following the same path and naming strategy.

QR codes for each of these 3000+ product’s HTML datasheet page are also created. These QR codes are on the product labels of their corresponding product which allow the end user to scan the code which will connect them to the corresponding page and datasheets.

I need this same system in my new shopify store WITHOUT changing the paths so my current advertising and packaging is unaffected, I also want to add in a search function so users can search for their datasheets without me having to provide them the unique URL for the products they are looking for.

I’m not familiar with Shopfy and its capabilities, my current designer is claiming this is not easily achieved and cannot follow the same procedures are my older WordPress site.

Can someone who is fluent in Shopify back up what my current developer is claiming? I’m not sure if the developer is correct and or is trying to add extra hours on this product that are not justified.

Thank You.

Hi, @PPCUser

Thanks for your post, and your interest in Shopify!

Based upon the provided information, the main issue seems to be the URLs which you currently have all linked to URLs via Wordpress/WooCommerce listings. Is that correct?

If so, and you’re wanting to migrate to Shopify, The only option to maintain the paths of the current links is to create URL redirects for each of these links and codes. However it’s not a simple process.

Regarding your HTML request on Product Pages; Shopify doesn’t currently have a built-in feature to generate individual HTML pages for each product. However, you can consider using Shopify’s product templates and sections to create unique product pages for each of your 3000+ products. This would involve customizing the product template and using Shopify’s Liquid programming language to display the relevant datasheets and QR codes.

I hope that makes sense!

sorry I should have clarified this,

my website is currently (fake)

www.mycompany.com

my product pages are

THis is how it currently is on the wordpress site.

www.mycompany.com/productpages/prodct1.pdf

www.mycompany.com/productpages/prodct2.pdf

www.mycompany.com/productpages/prodct2.pdf

my understanding is when my website is fully migrated my URL should remain the same,

By the way the 3000+ product datasheets are not all available for sale on the website only about 5-10% of these products are listed.

Thank You for your time.

This would be a monumental task as 3000 products have 9000 datasheets in total, since we offer them in different languages.

The 9000 datasheets are already created using my ERP software they are already generated and saved to PDF with a naming scheme that is consistent, These all link correctly to the 3000 html pages that are created.

Hi, @PPCUser

Thanks for the additional context!

While I’m not sure on the process of WooCommerce or Wordpress, in order to achieve a URL ending in PDF through Shopify, without a redirect, you would need to use iframe. This is outside my scope of support, however there is a similar post here you can follow.

Additionally, its worth mentioning that Shopify product pages are formatted differently than WooCommerce. For example, our product pages would look like: example.com/products/product-name.

Essentially, your developer is being sincere in that the task is substantial.

I’m hoping there isn’t confusion on this, I have all my pdf files made already I just need the customer to access them, i don’t need anything generated through shopify i don’t need these on the Product pages either (as most of these products are not even for sale) i just need them accessible to the customer, via html links.

I apologize @PPCUser , I was under the impression you were wanting to keep the same paths.

If you’re willing to host the datasheets at a URL outside of Shopify, you can absolutely do that by simply providing a link to the datasheet within the product listing.

My current urls are..

www.mycompany.com/productpages/prodct1.pdf

www.mycompany.com/productpages/prodct2.pdf

www.mycompany.com/productpages/prodct2.pdf

i have a lot of printed material with QR codes pointing to these, I DO NOT want to change the url i ONLY want to change my website from woo commerce to shopify while maintaining these PDF at the same URL

is this possible without having to manually add products to the shopping section that i have no intent to sell through the website

Hello,

The issue lies in Shopify taking control of your domain, limiting your actions.

To swiftly address this, consider uploading all PDFs to your Shopify Store (see this docs).

Next, create a JavaScript file with the “old” and “new” URLs. This file will recognize any user landing on an “old” URL (presumably non-existent) and automatically redirect them to the corresponding “new” URL, which contains the desired PDF.

This approach allows you to avoid altering your existing printed material.

For a more comprehensive assessment and resolution, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We are here to provide expert guidance and help you resolve any issues effectively.

Best regards,

Marc

Thank You!!!

I posted this to my developer, I’m hoping your solution will work.

I appreciate this,