Simple SEO URL (OLD version) [support thread]

[yellow1912]

Hello all -

I'm having some trouble getting this to work.

I tried installing the latest version, but ran into errors that were apparently due to a php5 vs. php4 problem. I installed the php4 version over the php5 version and those errors went away.

However, when I enable the SSU, my website won't work. The main page loads fine, but when I click on a category, contact us, etc., I get a 404 page from my hosting company. The address bar shows the simple URL, but I get the 404. As soon as I disable, it works again. I tried doing the clear cache thing after I enabled but it didn't work. I have no idea where to even start troubleshooting this . . . any suggestions?

This same thing happened when I tried (I believe it was) the Ultimate URL dealy, which is what led me to try this package.

Thanks in advance -- I'm really excited to get this working!

Several things:
1. if you are running 1.3.8 you should be able to ask if your host have php5 available. The switch takes several minutes and totally safe.

2. if you see the 404 page, one possible problem is that you either incorrectly configure your .htaccess file or your host does not support mod_rewrite. You will have to check this out with your host.

[Lard_Lad]

Several things:
1. if you are running 1.3.8 you should be able to ask if your host have php5 available. The switch takes several minutes and totally safe.

2. if you see the 404 page, one possible problem is that you either incorrectly configure your .htaccess file or your host does not support mod_rewrite. You will have to check this out with your host.

Thanks for your help --

I do have almost everything working, except for one category on my site. All the other category links work, as well as contact us, etc., but when I click on the one category I get the following error:

Multiple Choices

The document name you requested (/index.php) could not be found on this server. However, we found documents with names similar to the one you requested.
Available documents:

/index.html?/category-name-c-1 (common basename)
Please consider informing the owner of the referring page about the broken link.

Any ideas?

[joemind]

Hey Guys,
Thank god i found this support thread, this is the only place in zencart forum where there is a mention of Simple SEO URL, i have 2 questions, i managed to install the module and i believe it works fine since all my categories are now using new aliases instead of the old php URLs which consisted of IDs and Cpath,
1) i was wondering if there is a quick way, besides aliasing, to change the last alphabets of my products URL, which is usually in this format category1/line-e-2-p-34 ; category2/line-e-23-p-145 ; etc, i wanted to get rid of p-34 and p-145 and i wanted a quicker way than changing the aliases for more than 300 products, but if there isnt i'll just do it the alias way,
2) My second question is how do u get a zen cart website to rank in google and other SEO engines? is there some sort of step-by-step way to follow, or i need to just get a seo book or sth and read it?
Tnx guys for your help,
Joe

[yellow1912]

@planatgenetYour problem was that when the es.php file is uploaded, it was not uploaded with the right encoding (I suppose on some ftp clients there may be some settings that need to be set to upload file with utf8 content correctly

[yellow1912]

Hey Guys,
Thank god i found this support thread, this is the only place in zencart forum where there is a mention of Simple SEO URL, i have 2 questions, i managed to install the module and i believe it works fine since all my categories are now using new aliases instead of the old php URLs which consisted of IDs and Cpath,
1) i was wondering if there is a quick way, besides aliasing, to change the last alphabets of my products URL, which is usually in this format category1/line-e-2-p-34 ; category2/line-e-23-p-145 ; etc, i wanted to get rid of p-34 and p-145 and i wanted a quicker way than changing the aliases for more than 300 products, but if there isnt i'll just do it the alias way,
2) My second question is how do u get a zen cart website to rank in google and other SEO engines? is there some sort of step-by-step way to follow, or i need to just get a seo book or sth and read it?
Tnx guys for your help,
Joe

If you use our latest versions (version 3.5 and up) you will see that SSU can automatically create such aliases for you.

regarding seo questions, seomoz.org is a good start to learn about it.

[yellow1912]

Thanks for your help --

I do have almost everything working, except for one category on my site. All the other category links work, as well as contact us, etc., but when I click on the one category I get the following error:



Any ideas?

Can you post the exact link to the category that has the error here?

[joemind]

Tnx yellow1912 for the quick reply,
regarding that SSU can automatically create such aliases for me. i have Beta 3.5.7 and i am assuming everything works fine, i wanted to provide 2 products from my category and how their URL looks like so that i can ask u if that's the automatic conversion that you mentioned earlier.
Product 1:
when SSU set to false:
index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=26&products_id=23
SSU status true:
necklaces/amber-line-n-1-p-23

Product 2:
SSU status set to false:
index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=26&products_id=24
SSU stautus true:
necklaces/amber-line-n-2-p-24

Amber line n1 and amber line n2 are part of the names, the only addition that SSU didnt get rid of is p-23 and p-24, and i was wondering if SSU is automatically supposed to get rid of them also, since i have SSU the latest version uploaded to the server,
i have attached a pic of the admin page settings for SEO just in case my parameters are not appropriate,
Tnx a lot for your help again,
Joe

[yellow1912]

Assuming that you read the installation and usage note carefully, you should know that you should turn on SSU Auto Alias in the setting to have that feature enabled for you.

[yellow1912]

Weber asked me a question, which I believe might be of interest others, so I posted it here.

Situation: "I have SSU installed on my zen cart 1.38a, but don't know why my site was unable to be even listed by google... this is just out of my knowlege...SSU 3.5.7 then upgrade to 3.6.7"


Problem: when I visit the site, I see this in the header:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow, archive" />

Obviously this tells google to NOT index the site. And surely this has nothing to do with SSU or any SEO module. Whoever coded the template is responsible for that. If your site is not indexed by google for a long while, go to your site, right click on the page the choose to view "source code" and see if you find your metatag telling google to not index your site

[planatgenet]

There's a bug in v1.3.8 which only shows when you have Categories set to "Always Show on Main Page = 1"

Had the same problem myself, and never even knew I had a problem until I stumbled upon this thread with the solution:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87093

Nothing to do with Simple SEO btw.


Before I forget, Spanish transliteration working perfectly now, I am so pleased with this mod, thnx a bunch Yellow1912!