Ceon URI Mapping (SEO)

[conor]

Hi,

It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of Ceon URI Mapping 3.4.0!

This is a fairly major update with some nice new functionality, like Canonical URIs and improved language handling for Zen Cart, as well as several important bug fixes and sample files for Zen Cart 1.3.9b.

ALL USERS MUST UPGRADE! Previous versions are no longer supported.

Upgrading should be easy enough, full instructions are included in the documentation.

There are new rewrite rule examples in the documentation... it is advised that all stores should update their rule to use the new format as shown in the example rules.


From the revision history:

[ADDED] Canonical URI support added! Any page with a static URI will now have a canonical URI tag added to the page's header. This will minimise “duplicate content” reports as it tells the search engines that multiple pages should be treated as one, without actually redirecting the visitor.
The canonical URI hint causes any parameters added to the URI to be ignored, thereby preventing duplicate content reports when Zen Cart adds its session ID (?zenid=xxx) to the URI or when paged, sorted or filtered results listings add their parameters (e.g. if a page had a ?sort=2a parameter) etc.

[ADDED] Module now tracks whether or not the user has just selected a different language. If so, then instead of simply appending “&language” to the end of the URI, the module will automatically redirect to the specific URI mapping for the page for the newly selected language.

[ADDED] If the URI uses a different language from the session, the session is switched to use the new language. This means that the page will display in the language that the URI is specifically defined for. I.e. if a site has a page in two different languages and each has a translated URI (E.g. /chairs and /chaises), the session language will correctly reflect the URI being displayed in the address bar. This greatly enhances the language handling of Zen Cart!

[ADDED] Support for mapping hard-coded links containing “index.php?main_page=” added. EZ-Page alternative URLs use this format so they are now remapped to the appropriate static URI mappings.

[ADDED] Improved support for IIS ISAPI rewrite module added. URI Mapping module tries to use the original URI the IIS ISAPI rewrite module provides.

[UPDATED] The “cPath” query string parameter is now removed from the URI if the current category is simply the product's master category, as the category path information can be regenerated when the static URI is loaded. Results in neater URIs, and less “duplication” of pages as seen by the search engines.

[UPDATED] main_page query string parameter is no longer part of the main check to see whether or not an attempt should be made to identify and map the URI as some forms using the GET method provide the main_page variable. Main check is now made against the name of the script being loaded (that it doesn't include index.php).

[BUGFIX] Generated links to manufacturers weren't using the URI mapping entered for the manufacturer because of incorrect pattern matching in the zen_href_link function as modified for this module.

[BUGFIX] Typo in code to look up current URI mappings for a product was breaking the product preview info admin page when it was accessed directly from the “Preview” icon in the Categories/Products admin section. All admin/includes/modules/*/preview_info.php files need updating!

[BUGFIX] The product_id query string parameter is no longer removed if it includes attribute information, so that the attributes can be correctly pre-selected when clicking on a product in the shopping cart.

[BUGFIX] Support for arrays (inc multidimensional arrays) in query string added using new Array Query Parameter function.

[UPDATED] Extraneous ampersand character could be left over in the URI when removing used query string parameters from the URI.

[UPDATED] Example rewrite rules updated to support up to 5 characters for file extensions, rather than 4. This fixes the problem of 404 error handling pages with .shtml file extensions being processed by the rewrite rule, which was then causing Zen Cart to run and record the URI that generated the 404 in Zen Cart's “Who's online” database. Paths to missing files on the server will no longer be processed by Zen Cart and so won't show up in the “Who's online” database.

[ADDED] Sample modified core files for Zen Cart 1.3.9a added.

[UPDATED] Improvements to the documentation to make a few things clearer and information easier to find.


What are you waiting for - download 3.4.0 now!


The module will also be available from the downloads area in a few days.

Enjoy!

All the best...

Conor
ceon