Ceon URI Mapping (SEO)

Hi,

choccybox:

How do you delete old urls that the ceon mapping has made for a product, but which I have now changed? I notice that the old mappings are still viewable and they don't redirect.

Any old URIs are marked as "not current" - and therefore become "historical URIs". They'll then redirect to whatever the current URI is.

If it's not redirecting then you've done something wrong. Also, I don't understand what you mean by "still viewable".

choccybox:

Is there any way to delete them?

URIs only get deleted when the product/category they refer to gets deleted. When new URIs are entered/generated for a product, the current URI becomes a "historical URI".. this way your site will never again have a broken product link. So I'd advise against ever deleting a URI.

If you want to, you can of course delete historical URIs by deleting their record(s) in the ceon_uri_mappings table using software such as PHPMyAdmin.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Conor,

Thank you kindly for always getting back to me.

What is happening is that the URIs are actually redirecting if they have had there name changed e.g.

website.com/medal-of-honor

Will redirect to:

website.com/men-of-honor

But I originally started off with using the "Use the names/titles as they are (E.g. “MedalofHonor”/“Medal-of-Honor”)" option then decided that the URIs would be better in lowercase e.g.

I started with (uppercase):
Medal-Of-Honor
then I changed it to (lowercase):
medal-of-honor

Now when I call the Medal-Of-Honor page e.g.

website.com/Medal-Of-Honor

It doesn't redirect to:

website.com/medal-of-honor

I can still view both pages if I enter the URI in the web browser.

What I'm worried about here is that bots could start indexing two pages.

What's your opinion on this?

Hi,

choccybox:

What is happening is that the URIs are actually redirecting if they have had there name changed

But I originally started off with using the "Use the names/titles as they are (E.g. “MedalofHonor”/“Medal-of-Honor”)" option then decided that the URIs would be better in lowercase e.g.

What's your opinion on this?

The software will redirect if the name is changed, but not as you've found, if only the case has changed.

The reason for this is that the URI mappings in Ceon URI Mapping are treated as case-insensitive. I would call this "best practice" rather than required. The ability to have capitalisation is put there to make the URIs look nicer but all URIs are matched/mapped based on their lowercase values.

I think by the fact that you've renamed your URIs to lowercase that you've noticed also that the vast majority of people only user lowercase when entering URIs.

Unfortunately as all URIs are eventually treated as lowercase, if the only thing that you change when you update a URI is the capitalisation, the software overwrites the previous URI rather than creating a historical URI.

I'm wondering if maybe I should change that behaviour, to maintain a very strict history. This wouldn't then automatically redirect the customer though, unless a "BINARY" keyword was added to the URI lookup.. I think if I was to go that direction that this behaviour would possibly be optional.

Let me know what you think.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

I could modify

Thanks conor.

Fortunately, I'm working on a new-look website for my store using the zen script and haven't launched it yet, so what I think I will do is your suggestion of deleting the old URIs in phpmyadmin. Am I right in thinking that the field to look in is the "current uri" field? And what I should do is delete all of the URIs that have a value of zero?

I'm not sure where you should go with the issue I found. I'm now more than happy with using lowercase URIs. I used to like the uppercase way, but am starting to dislike it to be honest. Therefore, I'd be quite happy without the three options and just have it all automatically lowercase, BUT this is not my add-on, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

I remain very grateful for it because it is definitely the most functional, easy to use, and well behaved URI add-on I have used so far.

Hi,

choccybox:

Fortunately, I'm working on a new-look website for my store using the zen script and haven't launched it yet, so what I think I will do is your suggestion of deleting the old URIs in phpmyadmin. Am I right in thinking that the field to look in is the "current uri" field? And what I should do is delete all of the URIs that have a value of zero?

If only the case has changed then there won't be a historical URI, if the name has changed then there will be.

If you never used the URIs on a live site, only on your test site, then you can run the SQL command:

DELETE FROM ceon_uri_mappings WHERE current_uri=0;

That will remove all historical URIs.

choccybox:

I remain very grateful for it because it is definitely the most functional, easy to use, and well behaved URI add-on I have used so far.

Glad you like it! :)

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Thanx Scott_C for the reply,

I did what you suggested but still no luck. Anything else that might work

Hi,

monet60707:

I did what you suggested but still no luck. Anything else that might work

I also posted a reply.. have you removed Ultimate SEO from your site? You can't run it with Ceon URI Mapping at the same time.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Hi All,

Thanks Conor for the awesome module. It works a treat.

An SEO company has contacted me today and made me aware that https://www.domain.co.uk and https://www.domain.co.uk/index.php both work and therefore dilute my search engine ranking. (They also pointed out that domain.co.uk and https://www.domain.co.uk worked, but I've fixed that now).

I can't seem to find a way to make https://www.domain.co.uk/index.php redirect to https://www.domain.co.uk/ in .htaccess. Is that possible with CEON? I searched this thread but couldn't find how to do this.

Many thanks for your help

Simon

Hi Simon,

simondale123:

Thanks Conor for the awesome module. It works a treat.

Glad you like it! :)

simondale123:

An SEO company has contacted me

An SEO company?

There's LOTS of dodgy SEO companies out there out to make a quick buck. Get recommendations from people who have used any SEO company who contacts you before you ever use such a company. (Just a bit of helpul advice there!).

simondale123:

www.domain.co.uk and www.domain.co.uk/index.php both work and therefore dilute my search engine ranking.

Ceon URI Mapping makes www.domain.co.uk, www.domain.co.uk/index.php and www.domain.co.uk/index.php?main_page= and www.domain.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index all equal by redirecting (with a 301 Moved Permanently redirect) from any of those to www.domain.co.uk/

At least, the latest version does.

This means that to the search engines all four of those variations are the one page.. www.domain.co.uk/

What evidence did this SEO company provide you with that your rankings were being "diluted"?

Given what I've said above about how the module works, with its special handling of the various possible home page URIs, I would find it hard to believe that I've written things incorrectly.

simondale123:

I can't seem to find a way to make www.domain.co.uk/index.php redirect to www.domain.co.uk/ in .htaccess.

With the latest version of Ceon URI Mapping (and possibly the previous few versions, I can't remember offhand) this already happens without any need to modify the .htaccess file. Make sure you are using version 3.6.3!

All the best...

Conor
ceon

conor:

Hi Simon,

Glad you like it! :)

An SEO company?

There's LOTS of dodgy SEO companies out there out to make a quick buck. Get recommendations from people who have used any SEO company who contacts you before you ever use such a company. (Just a bit of helpul advice there!).

Ceon URI Mapping makes www.domain.co.uk, www.domain.co.uk/index.php and www.domain.co.uk/index.php?main_page= and www.domain.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index all equal by redirecting (with a 301 Moved Permanently redirect) from any of those to www.domain.co.uk/

At least, the latest version does.

This means that to the search engines all four of those variations are the one page.. www.domain.co.uk/

What evidence did this SEO company provide you with that your rankings were being "diluted"?

Given what I've said above about how the module works, with its special handling of the various possible home page URIs, I would find it hard to believe that I've written things incorrectly.

With the latest version of Ceon URI Mapping (and possibly the previous few versions, I can't remember offhand) this already happens without any need to modify the .htaccess file. Make sure you are using version 3.6.3!

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Hi Conor , hope you are feeling well or as good as you can feel.
All the above examples you gave simondale123 301 redirects works like there suppose to except for one. I have being having problems getting it to do right for a while now. I'm using the latest version of Ceon URI Mapping. The link I'm taling about is this one www.domain.com/index.php?main_page=
If I put that link into my browser it will not redirect to www.domain.com/
it stays as www.domain.com/index.php?main_page=
How would I fix this Conor. Thank you in advance.

Hi,

countrycharm:

The link I'm taling about is this one www.domain.com/index.php?main_page=

Oops, you're right and I'm wrong.. that one doesn't. I'll change the code of 3.8.0 to also handle that variation. Thought I had done but must have missed it!

All the best...

Conor
ceon

conor:

Hi,

Oops, you're right and I'm wrong.. that one doesn't. I'll change the code of 3.8.0 to also handle that variation. Thought I had done but must have missed it!

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Thank you Conor. Check your email I sent you something.

htaccess difficulty:
I installed this mod on my localhost test site: mod v 3.6.3, zc 1.3.9f, wamp 2 server; win7

I can configure the mod and it does what I think it should do as long as I don't put in the htaccess file. I copied example from installation configure doc for site in a sub directory with admin not named admin.

Also tried leaving initial slash of folder name as seen in one forum post, and tried putting htaccess in www folder. Any combination I've tried results in a 'server error' when I try to access the store.

zc index is in wamp/www/store/ ; there is a wamp index file in the www folder (when I call up my store the url shows as localhost/store; then as soon as I access anypage it becomes https://www.example.com, including if I go back to 'home' it will show the example.com instead of localhost).

I'm tempted to ftp my files live where my site is in the root, on the premise that I'm experiencing a ^%$#&window7 issue, but thought I'd ask for help first ;o)

If this is wrong forum to ask, I apologize.

Hi,

soxophoneplayer:

zc index is in wamp/www/store/ ; there is a wamp index file in the www folder (when I call up my store the url shows as localhost/store; then as soon as I access anypage it becomes www.example.com, including if I go back to 'home' it will show the example.com instead of localhost).

You should make sure the paths to the index.php file etc. all match up according to the folder you put the .htaccess file in.

Please re-read the configuration instructions and make sure you've put the .htaccess file in the correct folder and that you are using the appropriate example rule for wherever you've placed the .htaccess file.

You should be reading the section

Example rule for stores installed in a folder other than the root of the site, with the admin named “admin”.

It gives an example rule for when you place the .htaccess in the "store" folder (rename "shop" to "store" in the rule).

As for the "example.com" issue, that's nothing to do with Ceon URI Mapping. Check your includes/configure.php file for that.

Please don't post back here until you've tried all options (including uploading to your live server) as I'm about to post an announcement and I would rather it wasn't drowned out straight away by your reply!! :)

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Hi,

countrycharm:

Thank you Conor. Check your email I sent you something.

That's very good of you, thank you! I wish more were as nice as you! :)

In return I'm about to post something for you... :)

All the best...

Conor
ceon

Hi,

It gives me great pleasure to release a new version of Ceon URI Mapping.

Version 3.8.0 isn't an essential update but it does have some minor improvements (especially regarding deleting URIs when categories/products are deleted). It also has sample modified core files for the latest versions of Zen Cart.

From the Revision History:

[UPDATED] Commas are now also converted to spaces before being replaced by the whitespace replacement character when auto-generating a URI.

[UPDATED] A dynamic Zen Cart URI with an empty main_page parameter, “index.php?main_page=”, is now redirected to the home page with a 301 permanent redirect.

[UPDATED] Mapped URIs are now deleted when the Zen Cart product or category deletion function is called. Previously the deletion code was called directly when a product/category was being deleted, but subcategories and products within a category being removed were not having their URIs deleted, wasting space in the database unnecessarily.

[BUGFIX] String replacements weren't being used in EZ-Page and Manufacturer URI autogeneration functions.

[ADDED] Exclusion for 3D-Secure IFrame wrapper file in new Ceon Cardsave Direct payment module added.

[ADDED] Sample modified core files for Zen Cart 1.3.9e added to the distribution.

[ADDED] Sample modified core files for Zen Cart 1.3.9f added to the distribution.

Anyone using 1.3.9e/1.3.9f who previously used the sample files for 1.3.9d that were included in version 3.6.3 should use the appropriate sample files for their version from this distribution.

Of course, anyone who merged their files with the Ceon URI Mapping files, rather than simply copying the Ceon URI Mapping sample modified files across (the **recommended **thing to do!), can simply do the same again.

Please note: You **must **read and follow the upgrade instructions as the list of modified core files has changed in 3.8.0!

Download 3.8.0 now!

The new version will be uploaded to the Zen Cart downloads area in the not too distant future.

Enjoy!

All the best..

Conor
ceon

Hi Conor,

Wow! That's great. It works perfectly now. Try https://www.firstpersonview.co.uk/index.php to see it in action!

I only copied across what was in the includes folder to do the upgrade, I didn't copy any files across to admin or the core files and it works fine. Do I need to copy the other files for any other reason, or am I OK to leave it now since everything is working fine?

I've looked at the two CEON options in my Admin and they seem to work fine. I can't see a version number so I can't tell you waht version I installed initially unfortunately.

Thanks so much for your help

All the best

Simon

Hi Simon,

simondale123:

Do I need to copy the other files for any other reason, or am I OK to leave it now since everything is working fine?

No, you absolutely MUST upload **all **the files, you have to follow the upgrade instructions IN FULL. You cannot only partially update the software. You may think it's working but things may be going wrong behind the scenes.

All the best..

Conor
ceon

hi,
thinking of installing this module, i run 1.39a will the core files for 1.39b work ok

ps nice to see someone from belfast.....

bryan

Hi Bryan,

How's it goin'? :)

bn17311:

thinking of installing this module, i run 1.39a will the core files for 1.39b work ok

Yes, but you may as well upgrade to Zen Cart 1.3.9f.. it only takes a few minutes and has some needed bug fixes.

bn17311:

ps nice to see someone from belfast.....

We're rare on this type of website! :)

All the best...

Conor
ceon