IndexNow [Support Thread]

[balihr]

Official support thread for IndexNow plugin.

Once approved, it will be available here: https://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=2416

Plugin built following the idea and discussion in another thread. Feel free to read the thread and see the potential benefits of using IndexNow.

Any ideas or suggestions for improvement are welcome.

[torvista]

Thanks for this, can you put in GitHub?

[balihr]

Will do as soon as it gets approved. There might be some changes required so I'm waiting for approval. For example, the one OldNGrey already noticed...

[torvista]

>There might be some changes required...I would have thought GitHub should come before submission as there is always something that crops up 5 mins after it gets approved!!

Hence I rarely submit anything but have loads on GitHub, to not tempt fate!

[balihr]

I would have thought GitHub should come before submission as there is always something that crops up 5 mins after it gets approved!!

Hence I rarely submit anything but have loads on GitHub, to not tempt fate!

Live and learn, my friend... Guess I'll be doing the same in the future.

[torvista]

Well, I've downloaded it and done some educated guessing as to what goes where but I really need some instructions...
since elsewhere in the ZC universe I've been informed that renaming an image file is beyond the technical limit of many users, I cannot imagine this download being approved as is...no doubt it works, but how?

[balihr]

Instructions? On what exactly? I thought the documentation covered it all quite well. Which part needs more clarification?
c/p from the docs distributed with the plugin:

Installing

ZX IndexNow Plugin is designed to work with Zen Cart 2.1.0 (latest version at the time of release). It should work with all releases 1.5.8 onwards but hasn't been tested. Older versions are NOT supported, although might work.

Before you proceed, make a full backup of your site's files AND database. Installation is done at your own risk.

Unzip the files from "files" directory to your computer. Connect to your server via FTP. Upload the contents of zc_plugins to your zc_plugins directory (or simply upload the entire zc_plugins directory to your store root). Be careful, the store root directory on the server is where your store is installed, not necessarily domain root.

Go to your admin section and use Modules->Plugin Manager to install the plugin.

Verify that a new text file has been created in your store root - it will be a 30-character txt file which is used as your key.


Usage

This plugin is fully automated once installed. There are no options to choose from or settings to adjust.

Adding a new product or category, or editing an existing product or category will automatically trigger a submission to Bing.

Only the URL is submitted, nothing else. You're are only notifying the search engine that this URL has some changes and should be (re)indexed. Submission is directly to Bing and no other search engine.

IMPORTANT: if for any reason you don't want to submit a specific product or category, you will have to uninstall the plugin before adding or updating the category or product.

If you want to submit the URL to all supported search engines (currently Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, Yep), you can change the endpoint in the observer file (auto.indexnow.php) to https://api.indexnow.org

[torvista]

Ha, ha...after downloading your file and not paying attention/distracted by braying children, I unzipped an unrelated old indexnow github repo that was in the same folder by mistake! I thought it was too bare bones!

[balihr]

Haha, been there, done that. Looking forward to your feedback and suggestions.

And, as per your request: https://github.com/zenexpert/zxindexnow