Hi Steve,

sjk1000:

That's got it. Thanks a lot Conor. Just dropped you enough for a pint and a bag of pork scratchings

Thanks very much indeed, that's the first donation in months and I'm very grateful for your generosity! I'll really enjoy that pint - I'm glad you like the software! ;)

All the best...

Conor
ceon

kitcorsa:

ERROR!!

ive just upgraded the mod and now getting a very bad error!!

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=747618#post747618

see the link above.

when i log in as a returning customer, after entering the password i get forwarded to google!!!! if i press back i go to the my account page loged in!

just to ad to this, we have found its a probelm with the SSL and not this mod!!

Thanks to conor for going through and spending time looking for the problem!!!

So, I've gone through and manually updated all of the URIs. It took about six hours, but I am SO glad to have it done!

I know my site might be rather large, but it's a shoestring operation - ie, by myself in the off hours from teaching english overseas.

I felt that it was necessary to remap 100% of the products both for SEO and to simplify and optimize the process of submitting to adwords. In order to do that properly, I needed to get a table of URLs of individual products one way or the other...

I wonder, is there any way look at the mappings that have been put in place?

I asked my first question because I am just so used to spreadsheets - they are so easy to work on, so natural. This whole web form business seems so inefficient to me. I LOVE how easy populate allows me to make all the changes in the spreadsheet which I just reupload. It makes the site so easy to back up, as well.

I don't know what format the mappings are stored in. But it would be so handy to be able to somehow parse them into a spreadsheet, make changes, and then reverse the operation to put them back into whatever format you use.

This probably isn't possible, but it can't hurt to ask.

What I wonder, is what if I have to upgrade zen cart, or my installation is corrupted? It is easy to backup my images and inventory, but not the URI mappings. I now have a file with around 400 URI mapped directory paths and their corresponding item names and categories, but it's not really a backup because I can't upload it...but maybe I will be able to put it into the mapping manager? I would hate to have to go through that whole process again!

I know my circumstances are probably not common..but I am so curious how I can view the changes I have made.

BTW, one thing that has come in tremendously useful is the ability to map different URIs to single products. Some parts are shared between motorcycles, but I want the users to come in with the URI for their bike. This makes it quite easy :)

Thanks again for your help. I will upload the patch today. Just curious, will it affect my mappings in any way?

Thanks,
Sasha Shepherd
hyosungsource.com

p.s. Of course, I was looking in includes/configure.php and NOT admin/includes/configure.php. Whoops! Thank you!

P.S. If anyone has, like me, a spreadsheet of their products, and has used URI mapping, making a column of:

=concatenate("http://www.yourdomain.com/",lower(A1),"/",lower(substitute(B1," ","-")))

Where A is the Category column and B is the Product Name column will produce a column of specific URLs to each and every one of your products, perfect for highly targeted adwords and search engine submission :)

(tested on gnumeric, should work on excel. Of course, the lower() are not necessary, but will make it nice and consistent)

Hey there, so, I got a bit less dumb since my last post.

I am here looking at the ceon_uri_mappings SQL table.

If I were to fill this table out manually - inserting the correct "associated_db_id" from the products table, along with the desired URI mappings, and upload these changes to SQL - would this have the effect of mass submitting the changes? Or would it cause problems somewhere in my site?

Thanks,
Sasha

P.S. Of course, the line I meant to put above was

=concatenate("http://www.yourdomain.com/",lower(substitute(A1," ","-")),"/",lower(substitute(B1," ","-")))

I have installed the URI add on and when adding new product or ticking the uri change box for existing products I am getting a 404 message.
I have the htaccess file and used the shop/ option as my files are in there.
I dont know what to do, please help.
here is a copy of the htaccess code incase I got it wrong somewhere (never done web stuff before!)

$Id: .htaccess 1105 2005-04-04 22:05:35Z birdbrain $

This is used with Apache WebServers

For this to work, you must include the parameter 'Options' to

the AllowOverride configuration

Example:

<Directory "/usr/local/apache/htdocs">

AllowOverride Options

</Directory>

'All' with also work. (This configuration is in the

apache/conf/httpd.conf file)

The following makes adjustments to the SSL protocol for Internet

Explorer browsers

Fix certain PHP values

#<IfModule mod_php4.c>

php_value session.use_trans_sid 0

php_value register_globals 1

#</IfModule>

to turn off register_globals

php_value register_globals 0

RewriteEngine On

ONLY rewrite URIs beginning with /shop/

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/shop/.* [NC]

Don't rewrite any URIs ending with a file extension (ending with .[xxxx])

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$

Don't rewrite admin directory

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/admin.* [NC]

Don't rewrite editors directory

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/editors.* [NC]

Don't rewrite payment pages/callback handlers

(Won't be rewritten by rules above but included here in case rewriting of URIs ending in .php is added)

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/ipn_main_handler.php.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/iridium_3d_secure_iframe.php.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/localities_remote_loader.php.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/nochex_apc_handler.php.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/protx_direct_3d_secure_iframe.php.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/shop/realex_remote_3d_secure_iframe.php.* [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 (.*) shop/index.php?%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

What version of Zen Cart are you using?1.38a
Has your site been upgraded? When? From what version(s)? no
What addons have you installed? When? just google analytics - 2 months ago and new security patch
In what ways is your site customized or different from a brand new uncustomized install? all in /shop
If you're encountering display/layout problems, post your site URL* so it can be seen in action. https://www.kiddycat.co.uk
If you're encountering problems that could be related to your server or hosting company, include the name of your hosting company (not their URL). 1and1
HAVE YOU LOOKED IN THE FAQ AREA for answers to your question? (ie: a search for your error message or what you want to edit/change, etc) yes
Have you searched the FORUM for your error message or for answers to the question you're asking? yes
WHEN did the problem "start"? How does that compare with other events of your hosting company, changes you've made to your site files/addons, or your admin settings, etc? uri add on
If this is your first store, have you tested all aspects of transactions before going live? yes

Thanks Kim

I'd like so start a discussion on how everyone is formatting their URL's now that you can do anything you want with them. We are looking for best practices and avoiding common pitfalls.

For categories we are using single directory deep:
example.com/Category
example.com/Sub-Category

We chose not to use example.com/Category/Sub-Category

Why? Increasingly we are seeing the top 10 results looking at the first keywords or phrases in the url. It is also easier as a visitor to look at the URL and decide if that sub-category pertains to their search rather than seeing example.com/category/.... (Assuming your categories are named somewhat long words or muletiple levels deep.) A disturbing trend is that repeat uses of the keywords example.com/category/category/category is getting better ranking. Personally I find it spammy and we are avoiding it at the moment. If we lose top 10 rankings we will have to start looking at this somewhat spammy technique.
The only drawback we have seen so far is that we need to pay attention to not re-using the same category name which has not been a problem.

For products we are also using single directory deep structure:
example.com/Manufacturer-Product-1-Model#
or
example.com/Model-Product-1-Model#
We base the choice of Manufacturer or Model off our SEO guides for the specific Product. We are avoiding the problem of having two same named products by using Model# at the end of the string which has also improved rankings for searches based on model numbers. Again the choice of single directory deep is SEO and customer reference friendly.

We do not specifically use Manufacturer URL's for anything on our site, most of the listings would be hundreds of products deep and not particularly useful. We did however configure the URL's using example.com/Manfacturer/ManufacturerName. It would clash with our categories which are better optimized for SEO to just use example.com/ManufacturerName.

We did use capitals as referenced above for the first letter of each word as we think it stands out better and makes the URL easier to read. We did use -dashes- to separate words as it is the SEO friendly way of doing business.

We struggled quite a bit with the decision to go single directory deep. After seeing blog posts jump to the top 10 and remain there and based off performance numbers for a test run we decided to convert the entire store (some 3,000 products). This is no lightweight task. We moved 100-200 per day taking an entire month to complete. In the process we revised or entered meta tags for every category and ran SEO tasks for our best selling categories and products.

I have a wish list for changes to this module:

1. Create a modifiable template for the URL in the config with the following options: $Pre-DefinedText, $Manufacturer, $Category, $ProductName, $ProductModel#
2. Allow selection of: Entire Category structure, only Top Level Category, only Bottom Level Category
3. A visual reference in the Admin Category page as to whether a product has a configured URI or not (redlight/greenlight)
4. Not interfere with Edit Cart Mod

After the first 500 products we took the time and hard-coded the products to use $PreDefined_Manufacturer_or_Model-ProductName-ProductModel#. Because most of our categories are 100 products or so this was a huge time saver.

So how is everyone else going about URI creation?

Waaa! :smile:

I seem to have developed another issue with the buy buttons on my site not passing information to the shopping cart.

I had a previous issue which turned out to be due to my muppetry and not getting the install of the html_output file right. Now howver I am having a similar issue.

Where the buy button is simply a button there is no problem. Where the buy button is a submit button the information is not being passed and the item is not added to the cart. You are re-directed to the cart but the item is not added.

Not sure if this is a URI re-writing issue but I thought that I'd post it here to see if anyone can shed some light on the issue.

https://www.starlessriver.com/shop

Thanks

It's not quite a configuration issue.. I've noticed that your site will redirect to the URI Mapping entered in the admin when you go to the product page but no links use the URI Mapping. This means you've forgotten to upload the new version of

includes/functions/html_output.php

from the modified_core_files folder (for your version of ZC).

Weirdly, the links are once again not using the URI mapping. Not sure why this is. And yes, despite earlier muppetry I have re-uploaded ( and then re-uploaded ) my html_output file :smile:

About to re-install everything.

Yes, uninstalled and then re-installed and now working again.

Weird. Sorry for having wasted forum space.

Hi, thanks to Conor for the great mod :clap:, I especially like the ability to have custom URLs for each category and product.

I've read all the posts in the thread and can't seem to figure out the following (running Zen Cart 1.3.8a with Ceon URI Mapping 3.2.3):

1. Add to Cart functionality is not working. When "Add to Cart" button is clicked, the product is not added to cart.

2. How do I add ".html" extension to the URLs of all pages rewritten by Ceon URI Mapping? I realize that I can add ".html" to the "URI Mapping" field through Admin -> Catalog -> Categories/Products. Is this the only way of accomplishing this or is it possible to automatically append ".html" to all URLs rewritten by Ceon URI Mapping via .htaccess?

www.smartphonesusa.com

My .htaccess is:

RewriteEngine On

# Don't rewrite any URIs ending with a file extension (ending with .[xxxx])
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$
# Don't rewrite admin directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/admin.* [NC]
# Don't rewrite editors directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/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 (.*) index.php?%{QUERY_STRING}[L]

Thank you for your help!

I am finally getting to grips with this mod. It is fantastic. Thanks so much Conor. (A pint and sandwich have been sent via paypal)

I read:

Quote:
Originally Posted by chabbu View Post
Also, when i click a product within a category, it display the 'cpath' at the end of the url, why is this and how do i get rid of it (it's not a linked product).
This only occurs for linked products or products which have not had a URI mapping generated for them.

Hope that helps!

That implies that for linked products there will always be the cpath at the end of the link for a 'linked' product. Is this correct? Or is there a way of eliminating this while keeping the link?

Thanks again.

Hi Sasha,

Glad you like the module!

buddhaflow:

If I were to fill this table out manually - inserting the correct "associated_db_id" from the products table, along with the desired URI mappings, and upload these changes to SQL - would this have the effect of mass submitting the changes? Or would it cause problems somewhere in my site?

Yes, that is a perfectly fine way to do things. Anyone who is comfortable with PHPMyAdmin should find the database table's structure intuitive and simple to integrate with. It certainly should be possible for a suitably set up spreadsheet to be imported directly or to output a CSV list of all mappings by using some simple SQL within PHPMyAdmin.

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Hi Kim,

kiddycat:

RewriteRule (.*) shop/index.php?%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

I think the above should be

RewriteRule (.*) index.php?%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

as you are placing this in a .htaccess file and not a VirtualHost directive.

kiddycat:

What version of Zen Cart are you using?1.38a

lol That's certainly a comprehensive post.

Hopefully the above information gets you up and running!

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Hi,

ses707:

I have a wish list for changes to this module:

1. Create a modifiable template for the URL in the config with the following options: $Pre-DefinedText, $Manufacturer, $Category, $ProductName, $ProductModel#

That's not a bad idea. I'll think about whether it's appropriate for the module or should be left to the manager software.

ses707:

2. Allow selection of: Entire Category structure, only Top Level Category, only Bottom Level Category

That's fairly similar in concept to the above, so the same applies.

ses707:

3. A visual reference in the Admin Category page as to whether a product has a configured URI or not (redlight/greenlight)

That's more core files changes so not sure about that one. Will consider it though.

ses707:

4. Not interfere with Edit Cart Mod

I don't know what that module is but I won't be modifying the URI Mapping module to work with any other modules. If there's a problem it's the other module not doing things in a way which is Zen Cart compatible. You can exclude certain files/paths from being processed by the URI Mapping init script. More info on this can be found in the docs.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll leave it up to others to discuss the actual format of URIs. For what it's worth I prefer the structured category/subcategory arrangement instead of your flat arrangement, simply because I value readable URIs over SEO optimised URIs (hence the name of the module not being Ceon SEO or something similar!).

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Hi,

Glad you like the module! :)

peter777:

1. Add to Cart functionality is not working. When "Add to Cart" button is clicked, the product is not added to cart.

I'm afraid I don't know why that would be, it's not a known bug. I took a look at your site and can't see why it's not working.

peter777:

) How do I add ".html" extension to the URLs of all pages rewritten by Ceon URI Mapping? I realize that I can add ".html" to the "URI Mapping" field through Admin -> Catalog -> Categories/Products. Is this the only way of accomplishing this or is it possible to automatically append ".html" to all URLs rewritten by Ceon URI Mapping via .htaccess?

Yes, you'd have to add it manually.

It's not recommended to add .html to the end of URIs.. the extension is simply indicating the technology that the site uses and Tim Berners-Lee (among many others) have made the point that URIs shouldn't include the technology being used as technology changes over time. URIs have no real need to include the name of the tech being used. I personally believe this to be a very good point! :)

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Hi Conor.

I am installed URI mapping and its's work perfectly for categories, products, EZ Pages and Manufacturers.
But I can't make it work for the extra custom pages. I have read configuration instractions but they are slightly confusing.
May be can you give exact example to insert for each field on database to convert:
http://localhost/index.php?main_page=page_2
to
http://localhost/page_2

(I understood that it possible with way 2 using GET variables but I can't find the right way)

Thenk you

Viktor

Hi Viktor,

Cattom:

I have read configuration instractions but they are slightly confusing.
May be can you give exact example to insert for each field on database to convert:
http://localhost/index.php?main_page=page_2
to
http://localhost/page_2

(I understood that it possible with way 2 using GET variables but I can't find the right way)

I don't see how I can make the instructions much clearer to be honest!

You'd want method 1, not method 2.. you are only using a single main_page variable, not any additional variables.

uri field: page_2

language_id: 1 (each language requires a record, so repeat these instructions for each language_id you have - most stores only have one)

current_uri: 1

main_page: page_2

date_added: select NOW() in phpmyadmin

query_string_parameters, associated_db_id and alternate_uri fields: keep "NULL" ticked.

Can't get much easier than that!

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Thanks Conor. This is a clear example. It's works perfectly. Thank you for great module.

I have zen cart set up in a development site within the sub-directory 'mydomain.co.uk/new/'.

A .htaccess rule to the sub directory /new/ re-writes the urls and everything is just fine and dandy so currently get nice 'mydomain.co.uk/new/products' urls etc. It does just what I want, thanks Conor. :smile:

Now the issue. When the site has been fully developed we will move it to go live at the root. In the development environment the urls have had to be added as, for example, '/new/products', but when we go live these need to be just '/products' (ie no /new directory).

So, ideally I would like to be able to add the urls in the development site without the /new/ sub-directory so that when the site goes live it just works (rather than having to go through and remove all the extraneous /new/ directory). Is this possible, and if so how? Or have I missed something?

Any help much appreciated, I've spent hours trying to crack this one. :frusty:

conor:

Regarding the upcoming products cPath problem, I'd never used that functionality before so didn't see how it generated links. I've updated the new version of the module to cope with this properly.

I'll release the new version when I get a chance to package it up.

All the best...

Conor
Ceon

Conor et al,

Upgraded to 3.2.3 today and the new version did indeed fix the cPath problem on the upcoming products feature.

Thanks,

Jeremy