Fed up of slow and broken imports? Always wondered why imports are so slow on WordPress? They do not need to be!

Overview of Super Speedy Imports

Super Speedy Imports is a SQL-first, developer-friendly, import tool. Instead of loading items to your site one-by-one, Super Speedy Imports stages imports in a custom table and then loads them all in one fast SQL query.

This architecture breathes life into your WordPress imports. Never again limit the size of your site because of how long your imports and updates take. Super Speedy Imports are so fast and lightweight that you can run them really at any time.

Import millions of items in minutes, not days. Whether you’re updating inventory, loading complex data sets, or expanding your site, Super Speedy Imports lets you handle it all without downtime or delays.

A sample 33,000 product import completing in just over 2 minutes (without uploading images)

Config for the import from screenshot for 33,000 products

Super Speedy Imports is Developer Friendly

The architecture of Super Speedy Imports is focused on speed first, with a close second being modularity and developer-friendliness. Super Speedy Imports runs its imports in ‘stages’. Templates define the stages and their execution order. Typically:

1. import-csv – loads the CSV to 3 import tables. _batch for post and postmeta data, _terms for flat term info and _hierarchical for hierarchical terms
2. massage-data – runs PHP functions against each row of the table to manipulate the data, e.g. change xxs to ‘x-x-small’
3. import-terms – runs wp_insert_term for any missing terms
4. match-existing – updates the _batch table with existing post IDs based on the unique identifier (e.g. SKU)
5. update-posts – actually updates wp_posts with info from _batch
6. insert-posts – inserts to wp_posts from _batch
7. update-postmeta – updates wp_postmeta from _batch
8. insert-postmeta – inserts to wp_postmeta from _batch
9. upsert-relationships – deletes then reinserts to wp_term_relationships based on _term and _hierarchical
10. attach-existing-images – finds previously uploaded images and updates _batch
11. import-images – uploads and attaches missing images
12. save-posts – per row, invokes the save_post trigger

From the above you can see there are various dependencies, but not all stages are required in all cases.

For example, if you are running a simple stock & price update, you could run ‘import-csv’, ‘match-existing’ then ‘update-postmeta’ and skip the other stages.

Each stage will allow you to run stuff before & after that stage. Additionally, you will be able to define additional stages to execute and insert them at any point. So – if you need data sent into a separate custom table, that can happen all inside this plugin. If you need a stage to talk to AI, that can happen. There’s the usual ability to run a function per-row if you MUST, but really I want to educate people how to use this tool properly to build imports which are lightning fast.

Finally – each stage is replaceable in this modular system. Currently, the slowest stage is ‘massage-data’ but this could be replaced by a SQL-first stage if that’s an option for your import giving massive speed boosts.

The idea is that I want to make a great platform for myself & others to create the fastest possible imports for anything in WordPress. There is no requirement that imports should be to wp_posts, wp_postmeta, wp_terms etc – they could ultimately go into any table(s).

Early Access Rules

This plugin is in Early Access. What that means is that really it’s restricted to developers and agencies for now and the licensing plans reflect that. If you are not a developer and not an agency, you may still be eligible to join the Early Access program if you can successfully answer yes to the following questions:

1. Do you have a dev site or staging site you can test on?
2. Can you clone it and rebuild it easily?
3. Are you able to edit wp-config.php?
4. Are you able to use wp-cli commands?
5. Are you able to view the developer console in your browser to read errors?
6. Are you able to read MySQL table contents if you know the table names? (e.g. using phpMyAdmin, SSH, Beekeeper studio, TablePlus etc)
7. Are you able to record a screencast of your pc so you can record any issues?

This plugin is going to be undergoing rapid development and rapid transformation over the coming weeks and months, and there will not be a visual interface for all new functionality so you will need to be able to read table content to assist in debugging. Please note that it really has been released early so that you can all take advantage of Cyber Monday LTD pricing.

Once you have a working import, you can keep your live site using that version of Super Speedy Imports for your import files and this is recommended. With Early Access, do NOT upgrade automatically and especially do not do so on live. I need to be able to develop and release regularly while in Early Access, so I DO NOT WANT the stress of people deploying updates for this plugin straight to live.

If you cannot answer all 7 questions above and you still decide to purchase then supporting you will be very difficult. If you are a site owner, I’d be happy to have you onboard so long as you understand that at this stage I need to be able to talk to you in developer-friendly language.

License Options

For Early Access, we are releasing the Business, Developer and Agency licenses only. In future, we’ll have Starter as well as a free version, but for now we need people with basic dev skills and with staging servers to be able to test and debug their imports prior to running on live.

Remember: All plugin purchases, including lifetime options, come with a 60-day money back guarantee, so if you’re uncertain about whether this plugin can do what you need, there will be 60 days for you to decide if I’m doing enough for your lifetime purchase to be worth it.

Free and Open Source Core Plugin

The main plugin will be totally free and open source. The main plugin is all the structure around the visual interface, the modularity, the ability to define stages etc. The core free plugin will include limited stages which are optimised for zero support. e.g. it won’t include the ability to write php functions for the massage stages and the free version will probably only handle simple products. This will be released through Github soon (hopefully mid December!)

Early Access Limited Functionality

Currently – as of 29th November – the following functionality is available:

• Import simple or variable products
• Import terms and product attributes (not yet product-specific attributes, only global attributes like colour, size etc)
• Import postmeta
• Import from WP CLI
• Delete data missing from previous import
• Custom functions to massage & map source to destination data
• Product image and gallery import

Some notable functionality not included yet:

• Post import (coming v soon)
• Stock status currently is only through custom import function from KB guide – auto code coming v soon for this
• CPT import
• Limited import history
• Import from XML or JSON or URL
• Product-specific attributes (if your attributes are not present under wp-admin > Products > Attributes then you cannot import them yet – product specific attributes are attributes that are not searchable)

You can view the full changelog for Super Speedy Imports here to get an understanding of what’s in the plugin.

Site Owners Note

I know a lot of single-site owners have been waiting for a solution to their slow imports and I’m here for you. However, at this early access stage I cannot spend the extra time required to teach you how to get the info I need to be able to support you, so please ensure you have read the Early Access Rules above and if you cannot answer them, consider finding a developer who can assist. You will probably be able to find a developer who could assist you in our #super-speedy-imports channel on our Discord server.

The nice thing about imports is that once you have your import configured, it’s largely just configure it, schedule it, then you don’t need to interact with it again. So – I’m not saying NO to site owners, but I ask that you confirm you can follow the early access rules above or hire a developer who can since I do not consider the plugin to be user-friendly enough yet for single-site owners. I really hope you understand this and don’t flame me too much!

More coming soon

The KB articles will be getting fleshed out massively in the coming days and weeks.

https://www.superspeedyplugins.com/kb/super-speedy-imports/

If you have any questions, come ask Dave Hilditch on our Discord server.