Quote Originally Posted by ksookma View Post
But if you go to the url without the www the www does not auto add. It does add on to the path when you navigate around the site but if google attemps to go to the non www version it will still work and google will think its another page.
*doh* forgot about the initial request to the website.

The canonical should work to tell most search engines the two URLs are the same. At least Google's canonical information mentions you can use canonical links pointing to a different domain. The canonical and base head element used by most templates is pulled from "configure.php", so changing the settings in those files is very important.

That said I would still use the 301 (my live sites do). Just must make sure the settings in "configure.php" match what your .htaccess file does (avoiding unnecessary redirects).

Quote Originally Posted by SPH View Post
... .htaccess. I'm assuming that mine is the latest.
Other than a few additions to handle items not specific to "Ultimate SEO URLs" I'd agree :)

Looking at SPH's example .htaccess, there are a couple of things I would like to mention. These may not apply to every installation, but are good things to keep in mind.

When Zen Cart is installed in the site root, you can safely remove the "ErrorDocument 404 /errors/notfound.html". In this case the only time an web server ErrorDocument would be used is if index.php cannot be found.

It would be better to move the placement of the forced prefix above the "Ultimate SEO URLs" / Zen Cart directives. This will ensure it is always checked before control is passed to Zen Cart (the [L] after a RewriteRule says, "Process this rule rule and do not apply any more rules").

Note: When Zen Cart not installed in the site root (for example in /shop/), any forced 301 to add a domain prefix, ErrorDocument, or other sitewide configuration should be added to either the server configuration file or a .htaccess file in the root directory.