Simple SEO URL (OLD version) [support thread]

[yellow1912]

I'm also looking for some suggestions from you guys here, especially the search engine expert:
Would you rather use
site.com/specials.html or site.com/specials

While site.com/specials.html may look nice, using it at the same time with site.com/specials can lead to duplicated content, so I'm a bit concerned about this.

[yellow1912]

Version 2.4b released:
1. Some base code for 301 (permanent) redirect. Currently redirecting only page that has a single $_GET param (main_page). More will be added later to cover more pages in order to reduce the risk of having duplicated content
2. Planning to completely change from site.com/contact_us.html to site.com/contact_us in the next version.

[Absolute]

Firstly - great mod. I need to install it on a store this weekend, where the old SEO mod crashed the server, due to the number of products and categories on the site, so hopefully this will fair a little better. Fingers crossed!

1 things I'd like to add to the stew is I haven't seen how you are handling extensions, but could this be a admin defined constant? I have a couple of sites where i need to replace the existing pages, and one is .php and the other has .html extensions, so I'd like to keep these constant if I can. Obviously, then if you don't want the extension, just set this to empty in the admin....

Is this possible?

Absolute

[yellow1912]

Not currently available, but fairly easy to do so. This should be available within 1 or 2 days since Im releasing new versions at max speed to get to stable state.

This mod stores product and categories in files, it only queries database the first time a category/product is loaded, that should reduce the strain on your sql server.

[yellow1912]

Version Alpha 2.5 is now available for testing, this version is packed with a bunch of new features:

1. The ability to set the file extension you want
2. The ability to set the name delimiter you want
3. Now you can have SSU automatically update the category/product names in links whenever you make a change.
4. Database installation and upgrade(in any later version) is done automatically.

For Zencart mod developers: this version is packed with:

1. A mini template class that can be used both in catalog/admin
2. An input validation class
3. A module installer/upgrader class
4. sqlpatch class that let you execute any sql file just like what you can do with Zen sqlpach


More documentation will come later.

All code and features suggestion are welcome and appreciated.

Demo:
http://demo.rubikintegration.com/zencart/
Download:
https://svn.rubikintegration.com/zencart_mods/Simple%20SEO%20URL/

[yellow1912]

Documentation added.

Please NOTE: this mod should NOT be used on a live site yet for several reasons:

1. A completely working 301 redirect method is still under development for best SEO practice (not that any other SEO mod such as Ultimate SEO or Magic SEO has done this properly). SSU's main goal is to do this properly.

2. I'm still thinking if I should even make the links created by SSU shorter. More features -> greater performance penalty, however.

@Absolute: I would be interested in testing SSU performance on site that has a large number of products like yours. Care to set a test site to do it?

Regards.

[yellow1912]

With the mod finally working in a stable mod, the next step taken would be mainly SEO.

I'm no SEO expert, so I had to seek answers from others before implementing the final algorithm, here is what to be expected in the next version, all comments are welcome. If you want something, better say it now.

1. Certain links such as:
product_info/cPath/gift-certificates-21/products_id/gift-certificate-5-00-28
Will now be shortened to something like this:
product_info/gift-certificates-21/gift-certificate-5-00-28

This is done for 2 reasons:
a. shorter urls
b. enforce the order the main params appear -> so we can prevent duplicated content risk.

2. Better 301 redirects which should cover most core links.

[DrByte]

If you're going to drop the cPath, I hope you have some other way of identifying the current category for cases when products are linked to more than one category.

[yellow1912]

Cpath value will still be there, I will just drop the word cPath in the links, but will re-build it before other functions need it.

[shocker]

I just installed Ultimate SEO URL 2.106.
I've configured it.

Now what?

Sorry for the obvious question.