Product overrides are an optional feature introduced in version 4.6 of our GooglebaseXML product feed component. You don't have to use them, the feed will automatically find your Virtuemart products without any input from you being required. Product overrides are designed to add some extra flexibility to the feed, and can be used in the following ways:-

1. unpublishing individual products from the feed, if there are some that you don't want to be included
2.  setting an expiry date for individual items
3.  setting alternative product titles and descriptions
4. setting extra product attributes such as size, color, custom labels, product gtins (where these were not available for Virtuemart versions before 2.6), energy efficiency ratings, shipping labels, adwords redirect urls for example

 Setting Up Overrides

You set up an override by going to GooglebaseXML->product overrides in your site admin. Set up a record by clicking the 'new' button, and adding the information. There are a few things to be aware of.

1. If your site is not multi-language you should leave the language option blank, and set up one record per product that you need an override for;
2. If your site is multi-language you must set the language option for each record, and set up one record per language per product that you need an override for.
3. Alternatively, in your feed options you can set the 'Ignore Attribute Language'  option to 'yes', and then just set one record per product that you need an override for;
4. For most attibutes, where you have child products, you can set up an override for the parent product instead
5. If you are not using product overrides, you can set the 'Check for Product Overrides' option to 'no' in your feed configuration, it will make the calculation more efficient because server resources will not be wasted checking for them

Unpublishing Products From the Feed

This is done by creating a record for a product, and setting its state to 'unpublished'. If you want a product entry to expire from the feed at a certain date, for example if you have a promotional offer, then you can set the publish-down date for the product. This will add the 'expiry date' attribute to the product, telling Google when the product offer is due to expire, and the feed will no longer include the product after that date.

Where you have child products, they can be unpublished by creating a record for the parent product, and setting its state to 'unpublished'.

Adding Extra Product Data

If you set a product override state to 'archived' or 'trashed', it will be ignored. The product will still be included in the feed, but any extra data you add to the override will be ignored.

If you set a product override state to 'published', the product will be included in the feed, and additional data that you set for the product will be used in the feed generation. For example you can set an alternative title or description, that will be used instead of the normal product name and description.