Ultimate SEO v3 (and v2.200) [Support Thread]

[lhungil]

There is no advantage at all to re-written URL's - but a load of potential problems.

... Other modules also present issues - I agree - but for the most part they are modules with a useful function. These modules have no useful function ...

So basically you are stating you see no useful function to human readable URLs or adding keywords to a URI. This is your opinion and you are entitled to your opinion. However there are business reasons other than SEO for altering the URIs.

These have been discussed both on and off the Zen Cart forums. But a support thread is not the appropriate place to start arguments about the value of a plugin. Hijacking support threads for various plugins and harassing those looking for help (or providing help) to continually push an opinion and / or agenda is disrespectful and unprofessional.

These modules ... are amongst the more "fragile" add-ons, and which are most certainly "challenging" to install and to understand. ...

I will again disagree. With the upgrades to support Zen Cart 1.5, efforts have been made to improve the installation and upgrade experience of this plugin. Yes there are places people can make mistakes, but this is true of any Zen Cart module or plugin. Constructive criticism on this process and how to improve this process is welcome.

Some of the many things to improve the installation experience with newer versions
Only a minimal number of changes are made to core files and a fallback to the Zen Cart default behavior is provided in the case this module is disabled. This module includes proposed changes to fix some bugs present in Zen Cart 1.5 (and are included in the Zen Cart 1.6 pre-release code). To help improve QA, new versions of this module also go through a BETA test cycle where experienced community members test the new versions prior to a public release (being posted to the plugins section). This module also includes fairly detailed installation instructions in the README to aid less experienced users (constructive suggestions for improvements are welcome).

The installation script (step 4) includes additional checks: to see if new uploaded files exist, to remove obsolete files from previous versions, to install and upgrade any needed database changes, to fix / upgrade configuration settings, and install configuration pages. If any step or one of these checks done by the installation script fails an error is reported and the module is not enabled.

Newer versions include a simplified ".htaccess" file for Apache web servers. When the hosting environment uses the Apache web server, in most cases only ONE change is needed to this file before uploading the file to a hosting provider - to specify the name of the folder under the document root where Zen Cart is installed. The next version will probably include some examples.

The configuration pages provide not only a short description of what each option does, but in many cases also provide examples of the effects of the settings. Where possible, when a setting is changed an extra check occurs to verify settings do not conflict (and notifies the user if there is an issue). This helps make configuration easier for new users (and existing users).