Ceon URI Mapping (SEO)

Hi Andreas,

frisco_aw:

Finlander.
Thanks a lot for your htaccess solutions. it works like a charm. You rock. :clap::bigups:

Conor.
Thanks for your tips as well.

Just to point out for future knowledge.. the .htaccess rule posted here for you by finlander is essentially the 1st example rule from the documentation.. the modifications made in it are unnecessary, merely syntax changes.

So when new versions of the software are released, if the first example rule has changed for any reason you can simply use it and things will work fine on your site.

The problem with your previous rule was that you had included the name of the directory your domain name was in, breaking the rule.

Hope that helps!

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Hi,

finlander:

Conor, thanks for your reply.

Thanks for taking the time to help out others here.

finlander:

That makes sense, 'cept the admin stylesheet has never been altered ..

Strange.. that made me go double check this on IE7 and I'm getting the same nowrap problem. This didn't use to happen.

I'll make sure this is fixed in 4.0.0.. no point worrying much about it for the minute as nothing is wrong functionality speaking.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Conor, mod_rewrite can be such a difficult thing to work with. I just posted the following on another thread because the rewrite seems to be causing the link between language and currency to get interrupted ... When I was changing from English to German and vice-versa, the currency wasn't changing. As soon as I turned off URI mapping, it immediately started working again. Dang rewrite! They always seem to cause some sort of problem.

(I did the testing on the home page w/ a bare .htaccess -- no other rewrites in there, so even on the home page, the URI rewrite still grabs the code needed for currency to change when language changes.)

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=981004

Well, this linkage issue w/ language/currency seems to be caused by the CEON URI mapping code that works using a mod_rewrite rule, which are often difficult to get just right w/o unintended things occurring.

Conor's CEON URI mapping module is awesome, but the rewrite must be grabbing and rewriting some code being passed that the language/currency link depends on. As soon as I turned off URI mapping, the currency immediately began changing with language again.

Conor.

Yea. i have no experience whatsoever with htaccess. thus, i was confused.

My test site in my local comp was working fine with example 1.

But when i deployed to the hosting site. i did not work since i have 2 domains in 1 hosting and the 2nd domain is not in the root folder.

I think the "RewriteBase /" that finlander did, did the trick.

Starting to use it now. Pretty cool. great mod.

Regards
Andreas

HI,

finlander:

I just posted the following on another thread because the rewrite seems to be causing the link between language and currency to get interrupted ... When I was changing from English to German and vice-versa, the currency wasn't changing.

Ceon URI Mapping greatly improves Zen Cart's language system, however, you are right, there is a bug in its language handling which causes a problem of not selecting the currency for a language when the language is changed. This is a known bug which was/is fixed in 4.0.0. There is some information about this earlier in this (far too long) thread!

I'll look it up for you as I can't remember off the top of my head and don't have access to the working copy which has the updated code via this machine.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Hi,

Here's what I wrote in an earlier message..

I'll have to upgrade the software to move the automatic changing of the currency into the Ceon URI Mapping language handling code. Effectively making the Zen Cart init_currencies script useful only for non-URI mapped URIs (which is fine).

It'll be version 4.0.0 that this upgraded functionality is part of.. so probably a few weeks off being released. It's not a massive problem so I hope you don't mind waiting.

.. I hope you don't mind waiting either! I really hope to have 4.0.0 out this month.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Conor, thanks much for looking up the old conversation about it .. seemed obscure but dang if it hasn't already been discussed! Have a good week.

Conor, I wanted to mention something in case it hasn't been noticed yet.

In the text box in Admin URI for the replacement strings feature, I use the following two rules (among others).

&=>, &=>

After clicking Save, the first one will render in that text box as & only (single character only), even though the database correctly still has it stored as & from when it was saved. So, after saving I will have the following in the text box, even though the first is really representing & in the database.

&=>, &=>

If I work on something else and click Save again, I have to remember (before hitting Save again) to re-do the & before hitting save again, or I will overwrite the correct value of & stored in the database.

I have noticed that the text box in Admin, for example, for entering the title of a product when routinely creating or editing a product will always render the full & in the text box, if that is how it was originally stored. I was wondering if you needed to know about this and if you would consider a way of doing this in 4.0.0 for the text boxes in URI mapping in Admin.

Hi,

finlander:

Conor, I wanted to mention something in case it hasn't been noticed yet.

You're really going through things with a fine toothed comb, aren't you! ;) Can't complain about that, we like to produce quality software.. it's just a pity that this ZC software is consuming so much of my time, which could be better spent elsewhere!

finlander:

&=>, &=>

Why do you have product names with & in them?

You should be using &.. the software hasn't been tested with HTML entities as product names shouldn't contain HTML entities.. if you need "special" characters in product names, you should use UTF8 instead of the latin character set.

The product name isn't "Barbie & Ken" but "Barbie & Ken"..

finlander:

I have noticed that the text box in Admin, for example, for entering the title of a product when routinely creating or editing a product will always render the full & in the text box, if that is how it was originally stored. I was wondering if you needed to know about this and if you would consider a way of doing this in 4.0.0 for the text boxes in URI mapping in Admin.

Personally I think that Zen Cart is wrong to allow HTML entities in product names, as is Ceon URI Mapping for allowing HTML entities to be entered in the remove words box..

However, coming down from the "idealistic, proper way to do things" described above, to a practical, kludgey, "get it working" mentality...

You should replace

echo zen_draw_textarea_field('remove_words', 'virtual', 50, 6, $remove_words) . "\n";
```with

```php
echo zen_draw_textarea_field('remove_words', 'virtual', 50, 6, htmlentities($remove_words, ENT_COMPAT, CHARSET)) . "\n";
```in admin/ceon_uri_mapping_config.php

I'll possibly include this change in 4.0.0.

All the best..

Conor
[ceon](http://dev.ceon.net)

thanks, Conor, yeah, I had a slew of old categories and products that I had both & and & in the title. When I started using URI mapping, I put in those rules to just drop the symbol entirely from the friendly URIs. That's when I noticed the Save action/rendering issue. Yeah, no biggie at all, I just seem to stumble on obscure stuff. It's like a curse...
:)

I'll heed your advice and warnings about naming conventions for all future work!

I kind of successfully added CEON to my Zen Cart 1.3.9f. The urls were changed to SEO friendly but when I click on the links I get a "page not found".

I've been looking around, googled it but found nothing.

Jorge05r:

I kind of successfully added CEON to my Zen Cart 1.3.9f. The urls were changed to SEO friendly but when I click on the links I get a "page not found".

I've been looking around, googled it but found nothing.
and if you search this thread you would see that the COMMON reason for the "page not found" error is because the .htaccess file is setup incorrectly.. Please go back to the documentation for this mod and read through the section on setting up the .htaccess file... The .htaccess file sample settings included in the documentation is USUALLY what will work for most hosting configurations. (modify of course to match your own stores folder names of course..)

Hi,

Jorge05r:

I kind of successfully added CEON to my Zen Cart 1.3.9f. The urls were changed to SEO friendly but when I click on the links I get a "page not found".

I've been looking around, googled it but found nothing.

You haven't set up a working RewriteRule (in a .htaccess file). Please follow that step of the installation/configuration process.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

conor:

Hi,

You haven't set up a working RewriteRule (in a .htaccess file). Please follow that step of the installation/configuration process.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

I thought I did. My zencart is located inside newsite folder and not in the root.
Could you please check if there's something wrong with the htaccess file:

# ONLY rewrite URIs beginning with /newsite/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/newsite/ [NC]
# Don't rewrite any URIs ending with a file extension (ending with .[xxxxx])
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.[a-z]{2,5}$ [NC]
# Don't rewrite admin directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/newsite/backend [NC]
# Don't rewrite editors directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/newsite/editors [NC]
# Don't rewrite cPanel directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/cpanel [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/frontend [NC]
# Handle all other URIs using Zen Cart (index.php)
RewriteRule .* /newsite/index.php?%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

Hi,

Jorge05r:

I thought I did. My zencart is located inside newsite folder and not in the root.
Could you please check if there's something wrong with the htaccess file:

I'm not a .htaccess checking service!

However, where have you put the .htaccess file?

If you have put the .htaccess file in the newsite folder then you'll need the following rule at the end instead of what you have:

RewriteRule .* index.php [QSA,L]

Please note though that you CANNOT test the site in a "newsite" folder then move it to the root folder.

If you want to test a site with URI Mappings you must have the site at the same domain level as the final live site.

So if your shop will be at "/" for the new site you must not set up your test shop in "newsite".

You can create a subdomain "newsite.yourdomain.com" and test things there.

Otherwise you will have to enter EVERY URI mapping again when you move the test site to the live site.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Instructions are for pansies! Ok it took me afew tries before reading your instructions :frusty: lol.

Seems to work nicely, I hope this wont mess up my existing qr's though. If it does, oh well theres only 600 products that will need to be redone :oops:

Hi,

richphitzwell:

Instructions are for pansies! Ok it took me afew tries before reading your instructions :frusty: lol.

Yes, it's not really the kind of stuff that's worth guessing about! ;)

richphitzwell:

Seems to work nicely, I hope this wont mess up my existing qr's though. If it does, oh well theres only 600 products that will need to be redone :oops:
Do you mean "QR codes"? Just read up on them.. Ceon URI Mapping is non-destructive.. as long as you weren't using other SEO software before, things should be fine.. QR codes when scanned simply link to a URI.. it will then redirect from the old dynamic Zen Cart URIs to your new URI mappings.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Yup found that out so yay. I was just afraid that your code would completely reroute deleting the old.

SOOOO since your brought up I had to check, but google base feeder still works and with the your new links yay!!!!! ...which was pretty much why I decided to use your system.

Nice job man. Maybe ill even donate when I get some cash

Found another advantage, when using Piwik or similar the page titles are now legible. :clap:

Does it keep getting better?

Found an issue man. If you have multiple of the same product names in the same sub, it kinda misses the others.

Perhaps using model number or both product name and model number instead would be better?