migrating products from another software - need help with 301 redirects

i am going to be migrating my site from a Sunshop script to Zen cart and would like to keep the names of the product, category, and general pages the same URL - for search engine purposes.. Or at the very least redirect the pages to the new URL's.. Is there an easy way to do this - or even a hard way - so that i don't lose all the search engine indexed pages we have built up over the years. I'm sure they must be, but the only thing i found is a module called Ceon URI Mapping/SEO but i can't get it to work.

How many products are there?

kobra:

How many products are there?

over 5000

so that i don't lose all the search engine indexed pages we have built up over the years
Depending upon what software you are migrating from, It will be difficult to maintain the same url's to products

kobra:

Depending upon what software you are migrating from, It will be difficult to maintain the same url's to products

not sure what you mean?? i know if i did 301's in the htaccess it could be done and i also know that coding it to redirect the old URL's can't be that difficult. could you please explain yourself??

301's - 5000 of them is a task - unless there is a pattern that can be reliable

kobra:

301's - 5000 of them is a task - unless there is a pattern that can be reliable

no pattern but the URL IS in the database table and can be extracted with the product number.

no pattern but the URL IS in the database table and can be extracted with the product number.
What good will this do when ZenCart's url is different???

CEON URI Mapping is considered solid and reliable, so if you are having issues with it, ask in the support thread. The author Conor Kerr passed away a few months ago, but there should be some regulars who know something about it and will help.

301 redirects will certainly work to transfer searches to the new Zen Cart URLs (with temporary hits to ranking), but they will not help to keep the old ones. Maintaining arbitrary existing URLs safely and efficiently can be that difficult unless you just brute-force a correspondence list; if it was easy there would be more reliable solutions out there.

kobra:

What good will this do when ZenCart's url is different???

huh??? have you read the whole thread?? the purpose is to make them both the same and we found a way to do it.

gjh42:

CEON URI Mapping is considered solid and reliable, so if you are having issues with it, ask in the support thread. The author Conor Kerr passed away a few months ago, but there should be some regulars who know something about it and will help.

301 redirects will certainly work to transfer searches to the new Zen Cart URLs (with temporary hits to ranking), but they will not help to keep the old ones. Maintaining arbitrary existing URLs safely and efficiently can be that difficult unless you just brute-force a correspondence list; if it was easy there would be more reliable solutions out there.

actually it IS pretty easy i found out after going back and forth on this forum.. and thanks to the good help i got..