Ultimate SEO v3 (and v2.200) [Support Thread]

[carousel1]

A 403 Forbidden is your web server telling you you tried to access something you do not have permission to access... Typical causes include: request to access a protected resource, server misconfiguration of access lists, or specifying the wrong RewriteBase in your .htaccess.


Good to hear.

thanks for the reply. actually i followed advise renamed to "RewriteBase/" in the .htaccess file which caused the problem. is this wrong?

[lhungil]

thanks for the reply. actually i followed advise renamed to "RewriteBase/" in the .htaccess file which caused the problem. is this wrong?

If your Zen Cart store is "http://somedomain.com/" then you can either set "RewriteBase /" (note the space) or comment out the RewriteBase line (as it is not needed).

If your Zen Cart store is "http://somedomain.com/zencart" then you would set "RewriteBase /zencart/" (note the trailing / for a directory).

If you are doing something out of the ordinary, you will need to adjust the mod_rewrite directives accordingly. The above assumes a standard web hosting configuration where the relative path for physical files is the same as the relative path in the URL (and HTTP / HTTPS are served from the same location and relative web path). 95% of modern web hosting configurations are done this way (when you have a SSL certificate for your domain).

[carousel1]

If your Zen Cart store is "http://somedomain.com/" then you can either set "RewriteBase /" (note the space) or comment out the RewriteBase line (as it is not needed).

If your Zen Cart store is "http://somedomain.com/zencart" then you would set "RewriteBase /zencart/" (note the trailing / for a directory).

If you are doing something out of the ordinary, you will need to adjust the mod_rewrite directives accordingly. The above assumes a standard web hosting configuration where the relative path for physical files is the same as the relative path in the URL (and HTTP / HTTPS are served from the same location and relative web path). 95% of modern web hosting configurations are done this way (when you have a SSL certificate for your domain).

thanks for the explain...

[emigiroff]

Hello every one,
Thanks for having this plugin.
I will greatly appreciate if someone can help me installing it on my site, i wouldn't mind paying for it.
I cannot seem to figure it out myself.
shopping.migiroff.com


Thanks Eugene

[fairestcape]

Hello every one,
Thanks for having this plugin.
I will greatly appreciate if someone can help me installing it on my site, i wouldn't mind paying for it.
I cannot seem to figure it out myself.
shopping.migiroff.com


Thanks Eugene

What is the reason you want to install this mod?

Please be aware that it has NO INFLUENCE ON, or ADVANTAGE TO any "SEO" you may be hoping for.

If you want to re-write URL's then be aware of the risks involved.

There is no advantage at all to re-written URL's - but a load of potential problems.

Naturally the choice is yours. In over 10 years of working with eCommerce, our team has NEVER used url re-write, and our clients' sites all do exceptionally well on search engine indexing and results pages.

[DivaVocals]

If you want to re-write URL's then be aware of the risks involved.

There is no advantage at all to re-written URL's - but a load of potential problems.

You mean the risk of installing this module incorrectly and the site not working?? You mean the site owner not quite understanding how to rectify the install issue because he's not familiar with how the code in the .htaccess files works?? Hmmmmm..

Well..

The same can be said of ANY module.. Folks muck up module installs and (as a result), their sites ALL THE TIME.. They ask for help with these issues on this forum DAILY.. Otherwise ALL the other support threads would be really quiet..

[schoolboy]

These "SEO URL" modules do, however, garner the most enquiries and views. Collectively, the views and posts on "SEO URL" exceed three quarters of a million - indicating that there are a lot of people having issues / problems. Other modules also present issues - I agree - but for the most part they are modules with a useful function. These modules have no useful function - and are amongst the more "fragile" add-ons, and which are most certainly "challenging" to install and to understand. Novices should avoid them for these two reasons. 1. They do nothing to improve the site. 2. They are easy to install badly and incorrectly - and when that happens a lot of other things fall over. I will continue to advise newbies NOT to install these modules - er... its my First Amendment Right, not so?

[lhungil]

There is no advantage at all to re-written URL's - but a load of potential problems.

... Other modules also present issues - I agree - but for the most part they are modules with a useful function. These modules have no useful function ...

So basically you are stating you see no useful function to human readable URLs or adding keywords to a URI. This is your opinion and you are entitled to your opinion. However there are business reasons other than SEO for altering the URIs.

These have been discussed both on and off the Zen Cart forums. But a support thread is not the appropriate place to start arguments about the value of a plugin. Hijacking support threads for various plugins and harassing those looking for help (or providing help) to continually push an opinion and / or agenda is disrespectful and unprofessional.

These modules ... are amongst the more "fragile" add-ons, and which are most certainly "challenging" to install and to understand. ...

I will again disagree. With the upgrades to support Zen Cart 1.5, efforts have been made to improve the installation and upgrade experience of this plugin. Yes there are places people can make mistakes, but this is true of any Zen Cart module or plugin. Constructive criticism on this process and how to improve this process is welcome.

Some of the many things to improve the installation experience with newer versions
Only a minimal number of changes are made to core files and a fallback to the Zen Cart default behavior is provided in the case this module is disabled. This module includes proposed changes to fix some bugs present in Zen Cart 1.5 (and are included in the Zen Cart 1.6 pre-release code). To help improve QA, new versions of this module also go through a BETA test cycle where experienced community members test the new versions prior to a public release (being posted to the plugins section). This module also includes fairly detailed installation instructions in the README to aid less experienced users (constructive suggestions for improvements are welcome).

The installation script (step 4) includes additional checks: to see if new uploaded files exist, to remove obsolete files from previous versions, to install and upgrade any needed database changes, to fix / upgrade configuration settings, and install configuration pages. If any step or one of these checks done by the installation script fails an error is reported and the module is not enabled.

Newer versions include a simplified ".htaccess" file for Apache web servers. When the hosting environment uses the Apache web server, in most cases only ONE change is needed to this file before uploading the file to a hosting provider - to specify the name of the folder under the document root where Zen Cart is installed. The next version will probably include some examples.

The configuration pages provide not only a short description of what each option does, but in many cases also provide examples of the effects of the settings. Where possible, when a setting is changed an extra check occurs to verify settings do not conflict (and notifies the user if there is an issue). This helps make configuration easier for new users (and existing users).

[newtozc32]

Hello,

I recently downloaded the latest release and the folder that is supposed to contain the .htacess file is empty. I spent some time reading this entire thread and I don't think I am going to try this install until I know everything is good first. If you someone could help I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

[DivaVocals]

Hello,

I recently downloaded the latest release and the folder that is supposed to contain the .htacess file is empty. I spent some time reading this entire thread and I don't think I am going to try this install until I know everything is good first. If you someone could help I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

what kind of help are you looking for?? I just downloaded the latest version and there is indeed an .htaccess file in the folder the readme says it's supposed to be in..