Quote Originally Posted by lhungil View Post
The server name being an IP versus a domain name should not affect this module directly... However some Zen Cart users have reported issues in general when not using a domain name (unrelated to this plugin)... There are some ways to tell just your computer to assign a name to a specific IP address to avoid using an IP address directly... Are you testing on a "local" environment (WampServer, Xampp, Mamp, etc)? Or are you testing on a hosted server (with internet access)?

If you decide to use Ultimate (SEO) URLs, keep in mind the category and product "titles" are placed in the URLs (and typically used in h1 tags by most themes). You will want to make sure these "titles" reflect accurately what you want visitors (and SEs) to see. You can use filters to manually "change" what is placed in the URLs - but it takes a bit of work at this time - so best to think about this early in the process.

General Advice (website development and testing)
My advice when it comes to installing, configuring, customizing, modifying, and / or preparing any content for the internet: First set up the software (or updates) in a "development" or "testing" location (not indexed by Search Engines - or - viewable to the general public). Once you have the site (or changes) ready for general consumption (and of course tested), then migrate (copy) the changes to the live website / location (and re-test).

General Advice (some potential impacts of changing URLs)
As your website does not sound to already be "well established" on Search Engines (SEs)... This is a good time for you to pick your URL scheme (always better to avoid ever needing a 301 redirect). If you plan at launch to use Ultimate (SEO) URLs, I would install the plugin on a "development" copy of your Zen Cart installation. This will let you see the direct impact of your "titles" and also play around with filters (such as having USU convert " in titles to in / inch / inches in URLs).

One can install Ultimate URLs at a later date (or disable the module if installed). Ultimate URLs will automatically handle adding a "canonical" page reference for search engines (unless your theme disables this head tag). This allows search engines to access your pages at either the standard Zen Cart URLs or the URLs generated by this plugin. The "canonical" head tag also lets SEs know the two pages should be treated as the same page (most SEs will also combines the two pages in the search engine index and treats them as one URL).

Ultimate URLs does also have an option to enable "automatic redirects" to issue 301s to aid in switching from the stock Zen Cart URLs (will tell the SEs to use the new URLs as the main URL and send visitors to only the new URL). But keep in mind (at the time this was written) most SEO experts agree well established URLs in Search Engines may take a 1-3% hit if a 301 redirect is issued.
General Advice (website development and testing)
I always setup my test sites as a subdomain. This way the behavior on the dev site is the same as if it was your "live" top level domain.. This will require few to zero changes to modify things such as URL paths, etc..