Obviously reuse attributes between attribute sets where it makes sense.
The key with attributes is to strike a balance between the number of attributes and attribute options. Its no good having a single colour attribute if you have 3000 options for it. Similarly, its a waste if you have 300 attributes for colour, with only 10 options in each.
The thing with attributes, is whilst desirable to have rich, detailed information for products, it isn't always necessary to break down every possible facet of a product into attributes.
Attributes need only be populated if they are being used, for example if they are used for layered nav., for configurable product creation etc. But if merely just to display product information, there is no reason why you couldn't group the data in a single attribute text field.
Attribute sets usually mirror categories - and there is no good reason to have 2500 categories of products. That being said, attribute sets don't really come with overhead, only the attributes do.
It's a lot easier to do it via setup script. Here is an example:
// Add new Attribute group
$groupName = 'My Attr Group';
$entityTypeId = $installer->getEntityTypeId('catalog_product');
$attributeSetId = $installer->getDefaultAttributeSetId($entityTypeId);
$installer->addAttributeGroup($entityTypeId, $attributeSetId, $groupName, 100);
$attributeGroupId = $installer->getAttributeGroupId($entityTypeId, $attributeSetId, $groupName);
// Add existing attribute to group
$attributeId = $installer->getAttributeId($entityTypeId, ATTRIBUTE_CODE);
$installer->addAttributeToGroup($entityTypeId, $attributeSetId, $attributeGroupId, $attributeId, null);
Note: $installer
variable is instance of Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Setup
class. You can look there for further reference. You can also look in app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/sql/catalog_setup
folder for some more examples.
Best Answer
I've done this to export all attributes and their options (if it is a dropdown attribute) from the source website:
This will give a csv file [actually i used "|" to separate ;)] paste this csv file in MAGENTO_ROOT/attribImport directory of the destination website, i.e. website to which attributes need to be imported:
Thanks to :