For those merchants using our more advanced XML feed, please note that you must use https to link to your feed. The incoming requests will be converted to secure requests automatically. You will want to ensure that your programmers are aware of this requirement.

While Sextoy Distributing is not in the business of hosting and building websites for our customers, we do get this question a lot. There are many third party websites and developers who can build a store for you.

One company,Inventory Source, has really done a great job. They can use our product feeds and build a store for you. They even have it automated so that the product data is kept up to date. All you have to do is take your own orders on your own store, then submit them in your www.sextoydistributing.com account. We’ll drop ship the orders for you directly to your customer. You don’t have to worry about the warehousing and inventory components of having an online adult retail store. If you’d like to talk to Inventory Source, please click here to get more details about the feed formats or the turnkey store that Inventory Source can offer you.

But I already have a web site and online store…

You will need to find a web developer or integrator who can help you. We do know that Inventory Source can also help you with integrating into your already existing online store.

XML is eXtensible Markup Language.

It is a universally accepted general purpose way of defining and exchanging data. It is not platform dependent. It does not matter what database or computer system the information is stored on or transferred between. Like HTML it is a way to define data, so that it can be used by many different systems.

XML is an information format. It is up to the website or database owner to develop a way to use the data defined in the XML file and to decide how they will store the information in their own database or on their system. Often shopping cart systems or web portal systems will have a module which will allow the use of xml imports. Sometimes a shopping cart system will need to develop a script or program in the programming language of their choice which will read the xml file, parse it (match the info to their own needs) and then insert the data into their own database.

If your shopping cart system does not have a way to import xml, you may need a programmer to build a program for you to import the data. There is third party software which will allow you to change the format of the xml file. Perhaps one of these will transform the xml file into another format which you can import.

Wikipedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML
W3 Schools XML Tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/xml
W3C XML Homepage http://www.w3.org/XML/
IBM’s “New to XML” page http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/newto/
O’Reilly XML Information – http://xml.com/
PHP’s XML Parser – http://us3.php.net/xml

Per request we can provide an XML feed for all our wholesale products, at this time we do not offer technical support for this service. Please contact a specialist or one of the above resources for help in integrating it into your store.