Chemo's Ultimate URL's

[realforever]

Totally agree with jeking. I have to use a commercial one after all the time to mess with.

If you have the skill and time to dig into all the trouble details, it's good for you. If you need to focus running the biz, then ...

I believe the above statement apply on most open source extension or even the product itself.

[llnavs]

I have just installed it on a clean install. It works great -- except --
all the Information links such as EZ pages, contact us, All Products, New Products get an error 404.

And, yes they are set to rewrite in the seo admin page.

Any suggestions??

[jeking]

I have just installed it on a clean install. It works great -- except --
all the Information links such as EZ pages, contact us, All Products, New Products get an error 404.

And, yes they are set to rewrite in the seo admin page.

Any suggestions??

Try setting them to NOT rewrite in the admin. I think that's what I did when I was using the mod.

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

I've been researching quite a bit, and I have not found a satisfactory answer for any of these questions:

I installed this mod on 1.3.8a- after figuring out a few hick-ups it works great overall. However, I've found some critical issues I really need to address. Based on feedback in this thread, I'm confident many others are having similar problems/ questions.

--index.php?main_page=xxxx Bug/ Can't Seem to Correct it--
There still a minor issue of some pages I can't properly fix. I tried a pre_replace fix from this thread, but for whatever reason, it had no effect whatsoever on the links.

On my site its strange because both links work:
www.mysite.com/index.php?main_page=login
www.mysite.com/login/

here's some other examples:
www.mysite.com/index.php?main_page=account
www.mysite.com/account/

Oh yeah--you might notice I tweaked things. I don't like extensions on my pages, so I cut off the .html. Someone had requested a fix for this months ago--I went ahead & posted my solution already on the forum. It works nearly perfect for me...

I can't figure out the PHP though on the zen cart links well enough however to get the pages to display links like:
www.mysite.com/login/
instead of:
www.mysite.com/index.php?main_page=login

here's whats strange for me.. automatic redirects is "on"--but for whatever reason BOTH links work, and it doesn't automatically redirect from "www.mysite.com/index.php?main_page=login" to "www.mysite.com/login/"

Anyway--sorry to be long winded, but what I really need is to just get the clean URLs to show up in the display--or get the site to post these links inside the HTML, since serverside it's already working.

--Serious Concern: Duplicate Links are working--
I'm also concerned because duplicate links are working & it's not redirecting. This can wreak havoc on my SEO type stuff--the whole driving point behind all of this. It also seems 404 headers are not being sent--AND I did try the fix posted earlier in this thread, but it didn't seem to work...


--Final Concern: Useless Symbols Plague my URLs--
I'm trying to get rid of the little acronyms in the categories:

$this->reg_anchors = array(
'products_id' => '-p-',
'cPath' => '-c-',
'manufacturers_id' => '-m-',
'pID' => '-pi-',
'products_id_review' => '-pr-',
'products_id_review_info' => '-pri-',

You'll notice on any product you've got a "-p-" in the link, or any category has a -c- in the link. For my site at least this is completely unnecessary. Everything is 100% unique already, and I have no need whatsoever for these useless symbols in my URLs.

Aside, these symbols just make things busy, and at least to me, they are really unprofessional.

I don't want the category numbers in my links either.

So the question is... how can I cut / append the queries so it outputs cleaner URLs.. one without these little symbols and without category numbers...

--Summary--
Here's a summary of my questions.

1-How can I change the HTML output to display only links like this: mysite.com/xxxx/ instead of mysite.com/index.php?main_page=xxxx (I already removed .html from my links)
(see examples above to know in what cases this happens)
2-I can't get the site to do 301 redirects off the duplicate links--and it appears the 404 headers are not getting output like they should. How can I get rid of these 'duplicate' links/ get the 301 redirects working properly (right now, I can put gibberish in the URL and it still appears/functions!!)
3-How can I cut the little symbols and numbers out of my URLs? It's superfluous and unprofessional--my URLs are already 100% unique as well, so I have no need for it...

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

Add category parent to beginning of URLs? true --I notice this functions only looks one category deep, i.e. only one category above the current category.

I wish it would go perhaps 4-5 levels deep, so I can get all the relevant info built into the URL...

I've been experimenting--

I noticed I can change "-c-" in both .htaccess and in seo.url.php 'cPath' => '-c-'
in both cases from:
"-c-" to "-"

Tentatively, it's working so far. However, I'm not sure I can do that with any of the other symbols now that I have done it to one--although I'm going to try.

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

It seems it's almost impossible to get rid of those anchors because they seem to be fundamental assumptions of the mod. Without them, the mod gets confused & nothing works.

I think I've gotten pretty frustrated, I'm not sure how many hours I've spent on this mod, but it can't be good.

One reason I've spent so much time with this is that I need PERMANENT urls on my site, ones that will never change.

I can't commit myself to URLs that are in any way 'sloppy'

It seems I'm banging my head against the wall in terms of looking for a solution on this.

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

I believe there's a fundamental flaw in the way the htaccess is written on this mod--and I'm struggling to figure out how to correct it.

-- Unlimited Duplicate URLs? --
Problem:
RewriteRule ^(.*)-p-(.*)/$ index\.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

let me explain--the 2x wildcards basically mean almost anything can refer to a given page, as long as it has the -p- to represent product. I know this sounds ridiculous--but I've been testing this, and it's consistently recurring!

I observed that I could put junk characters in a URL to a large extent and it would still point to the item I was on!!! I.e. No 404's headers are being sent, so as far as a search engine is concerned, this would qualify as duplicate content.

This implies I could have almost unlimited duplicate URLs--which of course is a nightmare.

-- Need to Modify Base URL code for index\.php?main_page= --
I have another major concern here. I want to hide these pages: index\.php?main_page=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} from the server. However, the base code has not been changed in the case of logins, log outs, and checking my account in some cases, and since I'm new to zen, so far I'm lacking the skill to rewrite the internal URL mods (which I must do to correct this).

--Should I Give up?--
These are major fundamental flaws, and I don't think I have the skill to soundly correct them.

I really hope an expert will please comment on this! I'm looking for feedback--

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

I think the logic here needs to be turned on it's head a bit--

Perhaps the query_string function could become the anchor--then you would no longer need the artificial anchors.

e.g. all you would need to redirect (for example) the "about_us" page would be a query that identifies it in the query string, then puts it right in the link as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not what's going on with this:

RewriteRule ^(.*)-c-(.*)/$ index\.php?main_page=index&cPath=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

[dontknowwhatimdoing]

The person who wrote this is much more skilled than me--I just wish I had the skill to change the code so that arbitrary hooks... like -p- and -c- were not used.

Clean URLs are important to me--I want nice URLs that I never have to change... even several years down the road...

I'm still trying to figure out how to drop these 'hooks' from the php & htaccess, and I still need to get rid of the numbers and underscores based on category and product listings between numbers in the new URLs too.

[amdowney]

I have just upgraded from 1.3.7 with SEO Urls 3.0.0-beta1 working to 1.3.8 and 3.0.0-beta1 seems to be working OK still after re-adjusting the code in html_output.php and installing this patch for the admin: http://bugs.smarterwebdev.com/files/66396209.zip .

I tried getting the 2.x version going but gave database errors. So stuck to Beta, which I believe was made from the ground up.

How are others fairing with 1.3.8 with 3.0.0-beta1 installed?