Ceon URI Mapping (SEO)

DOWNLOAD HERE: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=1269

Hi,

It gives us great pleasure to release a new Zen Cart module - one which we feel many of you will find very useful!

Ceon URI Mapping (SEO)

Full information about the new module is available on our website in a more accessible format: module info/features.

I've tried to reproduce the feature list (in as readable a format as possible with this forum's software) below:


Improves your Rankings in Search Engines by using Static URIs!

• Implementing a major part of all SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) practices, this module lets you specify static, keyword-based URIs to be used instead of dynamic, ID-based URIs.

For example - for a product - instead of dynamic URIs like this:

[COLOR=RoyalBlue]http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=5
[/COLOR]
A static address, full of keywords, could be specified for the product:

http://yourstore.com/books/life_is_good


100% Compatibility with Zen Cart

• Installing the module won't break any of the functionality of Zen Cart.
• The module works using Zen Cart's Initsystem so it doesn't interfere with any of its workings. Zen Cart pages have no idea the module is even running, the run-time environment appears exactly as if the module wasn't installed.
• This should mean that the module will work perfectly with most (and most likely all) other Zen Cart modules.

Easy-to-use Admin Integration for Categories, Products and EZ-Pages

• Specifying custom URI mappings for Categories, Products and EZ-Pages is quick and easy.. just browse to the appropriate Category/Product/EZ-Page in the admin and enter the URI to be used in the text fields added by the module, or tick the “auto-generate” check box, if auto-generation is enabled!
• Change or remove existing URI mappings in the same easy manner!

URI Mapping Auto-generation

• The module comes with very powerful, flexible and easy-to-use URI mapping auto-generation functionality.
• If auto-generation is used to create a URI mapping for a Product, Category or EZ-Page it automatically capitalises the Product/Category Name or EZ-Page title according to your preferred settings, replaces any whitespace with your preferred character, removes selected words and replaces particular characters/strings as specified in the configuration utility.

Full Multi-language Support - including Transliteration and UTF-8!

• The module is fully multilingual - every Product, Category or EZ-Page can have a URI mapping for each language supported by the store!
• This means that the site will probably feature much higher in search engine listings specific to the various languages the store supports!
• The module also has full support for transliteration! When using the URI mapping auto-generation functionality it transliterates the names/titles from any language into plain ASCII, the format used by URIs.
• Transliteration support means that characters outside of the standard character set allowed in URIs won't just be stripped from the URI, leaving words with letters missing. For example, “á” is replaced with “a”, “ß” is replaced with “ss” etc.
• The transliteration support extends to supporting the UTF-8 character set, so Japanese, Chinese characters etc. are all handled easily!

Organise EZ-Pages into Site Sections

• By putting a bit of thought into the format of URI mappings for EZ-Pages, it is possible to organise them into logical sections.
• EZ-Pages no longer have to appear as being “root” pages of the site!
• For example, a “Company” section could be created with 4 EZ-Pages using URI mappings such as the following:
  
  /company
  /company/about_us
  /company/about_us/endorsements
  /company/how_to_find_us

Ability to use Static URIs for any Zen Cart page

• Static URIs can be used for any Zen Cart page by directly entering the URIs to map from and to in the database table for the module.
• The Zen Cart pages being mapped to can have their GET variables initialised so it appears as if the full dynamic URL had been used. For example:
  
  http://yourstore.com/surveys/shipping
• Could map to a custom survey page, with the necessary ID for the survey to be shown:
  
  http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=survey&survey_id=2
• Please note: There is no admin interface for entering these URI mappings in this module, they have to be entered manually (using software such as PHPMyAdmin).

Ability to use Static URIs as an Alias for any other Static URI

• The module can be used to redirect from one static URI to another.
• This allows the store to handle visits to broken/old links.
• It also allows the store to increase the number of keywords being used to link to a page on the site through the creation of an alternative link/alias.
• Please note: There is no admin interface for entering these URI mappings in this module, they have to be entered manually (using software such as PHPMyAdmin).

Transparently Handles URIs With or Without a Slash (/) at the End

• The module sees URIs with a slash at the end as identical to those without one. For example, the following are equivalent:
  
  http://yourstore.com/books/life_is_good
  http://yourstore.com/books/life_is_good/

Respects Context of Link to a Category page

• The module retains Zen Cart's category history when linking to a subcategory of another category, so the full path back through any parent categories is available. (Without this feature all categories being mapped to by a URI mapping would appear as if their only parent category was the root of the store).

Support for all of Zen Cart's Standard Product Types (and more)!

• The module has full support for the standard 5 product types in Zen Cart plus the product_book type (version 4 from the Zen Cart download area).

Automatic Usage of any URI mappings Defined for Categories, Products or EZ-Pages

• The module modifies the main zen_href_link function slightly to make automatic use of any URI mappings defined for a category, product or EZ-Page.
• Having each page link to each other using their static URIs increases the usage of keywords on the site, further helping SEO!

Download the module now!


We hope you like this new module. Obviously we're biased, but it's something we think every Zen Cart store should have! :)

It should also be available from the downloads area in a few days.


As with our other modules, feedback would be appreciated. It takes a lot of work to write something like this!

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Just stumbled upon this new mod. Is this another SEO Url mod? Your name of the mod confused me a bit.

Could you elaborate on what is different compared to Ultimate SEO and Simple SEO?

Thank you.

Hi,

Thanks for your interest in our software!

mydanilo:

Is this another SEO Url mod?

Yes.

mydanilo:

Could you elaborate on what is different compared to Ultimate SEO and Simple SEO?

I'm afraid that I haven't used those mods so I can't give an exact comparison. I've encountered Ultimate SEO when working on other people's sites and I don't like the way it adds product IDs and category IDs to the URIs it generates.

Our (Ceon's) SEO module is called "URI Mappings" because it allows you to map whatever URI you want to a particular product/category/EZ-Page.

The URIs aren't generated "live" like Ultimate SEO, they have to be generated or specified in the Admin. This is easily done though.

The main advantages of Ceon's URI Mapping module is that you get clean URIs and that you can use whatever URIs you want.

This is good news for anyone who wants to advertise URIs anywhere as they don't have to have "random-looking" formats (with IDs etc.) which results in URIs that look so much more professional and are much easier for people to read and/or remember.

Also, anyone moving from an old site that already has specific URIs for their products etc. can keep using the olds ones and everything will still work perfectly.

A good read of the feature list should show you the other advantages of the module.

I hope that helps!

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Very nice!!! Always good to have choices. You can do the same thing with Simple Seo Url through link-alias though.

Thank you for explaining. Seems an alternative if somebody just wants the mapping and no automatic url rewrite.

Otherwise, SSEO from yellow would be at hand.

Hi,

mydanilo:

Thank you for explaining. Seems an alternative if somebody just wants the mapping and no automatic url rewrite.

It features "auto-generation" so it's ideally placed for new stores.. by default a full URI will be auto-generated for a new product/category/EZ-page.

It will also be auto-generated if you are editing a product/category/EZ-page which doesn't yet have a URI mapping.

Instead of generating a URI when the customer looks at a product/category/EZ-Page, the store admin user(s) create the URI when adding/editing products/categories/EZ-pages...

so it is automatic, but in a "different" way. :)

mydanilo:

Otherwise, SSEO from yellow would be at hand.

I just took a look at the website for that module and its code and it seems to be a good module also.. however it adds product IDs etc. by default which I find ugly. The new alias feature is great but that didn't exist when I wrote this module and it requires more work for the admin user(s) than the auto-generation features of this new module (for products/categories and EZ-pages but not for other pages, it's easier for them!).

As yellow says, it does no harm to have a choice! (Thanks for the nice comment yellow1912) :)

Hope that makes things clearer still!

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Yup, thanks to this zencart users no longer have to buy commercial seo module any more.

For current SSU users: new version of SSU will come with a nice link alias table using jquery grid as well as the fully automatic url mapping as well, so no need to worry ^_^

Hi,

A few small server interaction issues were found now that the module is out in the wild.

From the revision history:

[BUGFIX] Module wasn't being run on the store side on servers which have an unexpected SCRIPT_NAME value. Updated to only use value of REQUEST_URI, SCRIPT_NAME is no longer used.
[BUGFIX] String class wasn't fully compatible with PHP 4.x.

All users are advised to update.

The archive for 2.0.1 was submitted to the downloads area last week but still isn't there so please just go to our site to download:

http://dev.ceon.net/web/zen-cart/uri_mapping/downloads

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

it works

Hi,

mariuskem:

it works

lol, well that didn't take too much for me to do! :)

Enjoy the software!

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Could you provide please the instalation insctucions?

Hello Conor,

I just sent you a PM. Can you check please Hope you can help me. Thanks

Conor

I have tried installing and I think my error is with the .htaccess file.

can you give and example of what it should look like.

I am getting an error on my localhost test server which gives the: URL website/website/pagename/product as being not found.

it appears to be repeating the website name and I am sure this is a sall tek in a setting some where to cure it.

Thanks

MG

Hi Mikey,

How are you? (Been a while! :) )

MikeyG:

I have tried installing and I think my error is with the .htaccess file.

can you give and example of what it should look like.

The installation documentation contains several complete examples of what the .htaccess file should look like, one for stores that use don't a prefix and one for those that do.

This is very much a personal server issue so please don't reply to this thread, e-mail (not PM ;) ) me privately and I'll see if I can help!

All the best..

Conor
Ceon

Hi,

Just installed this module, and getting a problem with my Ajax categories menu. The links are not expanding the tree except for the parent categories of the current subcategory you are viewing.

You can see the live version here: Macdonald Sporrans.

I've not added any custom URI's yet, just finished a clean install.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Hi,

Please disregard the link on the previous post, i've had to change back to the standard ZC category menu at the moment due to the problem.

I'd be grateful for some help on this problem, and can turn on the Ajax categories menu at any time (preferably for as short a time as possible to allow for testing).

Thanks.

Hi,

fergusmacdonald:

I'd be grateful for some help on this problem, and can turn on the Ajax categories menu at any time (preferably for as short a time as possible to allow for testing).

I'm not familiar with that module but I took a look at its source and can't see anything that would clash with the Ceon URI Mapping module.. the only functionality the Ceon URI Mapping module modifies on the catalog side is the zen_href_link function, so I was looking to see if the fact that it doesn't use cPath in the URIs would somehow cause this AJAX Category module to fail but, after looking at the source, I can't see how it could.

Maybe you didn't install things properly? You might have a modified html_output.php file which you need to simply copy the Ceon URI Mapping code across to, rather than overwriting this file with the sample html_output.php file supplied in the distribution?

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

conor:

Hi,



I'm not familiar with that module but I took a look at its source and can't see anything that would clash with the Ceon URI Mapping module.. the only functionality the Ceon URI Mapping module modifies on the catalog side is the zen_href_link function, so I was looking to see if the fact that it doesn't use cPath in the URIs would somehow cause this AJAX Category module to fail but, after looking at the source, I can't see how it could.

Maybe you didn't install things properly? You might have a modified html_output.php file which you need to simply copy the Ceon URI Mapping code across to, rather than overwriting this file with the sample html_output.php file supplied in the distribution?

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Hi Conor,

Thanks for getting back to me. I checked my html_output.php file against a fresh download of ZC and they were identical. Not sure where this error is coming from...will try SSU instead as i really like the Ajax categories menu.

Hi Fergus,

fergusmacdonald:

Thanks for getting back to me. I checked my html_output.php file against a fresh download of ZC and they were identical. Not sure where this error is coming from...will try SSU instead as i really like the Ajax categories menu.

No problem.

I don't see how the module could break any other modules, it's specifically designed to be "invisible" to other modules so I'm inclined to think there's a bug in the Ajax module (possibly something to do with it requiring "cPath" to be in the URI so it won't work with other SEO modules I'd imagine) or you configured something wrong. It's probably simple to fix but of course you are free to use whatever modules you like!

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Conor,
This was timely, as I'm down to the last few items before replacing my legacy site with my new zencart site.

I was able to get the Ceon Mapping installed and up very quickly. One question. My situation is different than most, as it's a shopping cart integration for an existing site that has excellent seo. So most of my pages need to be named the same as the existing site so I don't have broken links and maintain the placement. So far so good.

How do I specify an alternate url for the index page?

The legacy site was html, so I specified html/htm suffixes for the new site. Will that cause a problem (being that they are php?)

We didn't have a shopping cart or an account function before, so I don't see any reason to translate those. Is that short-sighted?

Again, the whole idea is to maintain the excellent seo placement and not have broken links.

Thanks again for a great product!

JR