Chemo's Ultimate URL's

The only solution I have found so far is to create new re-write rules fore every page not covered by the bulk of the .htaccess file:

Things like the privacy page, contact page, EZ pages, etc...

Then remove the "all encompassing" section of the .htaccess.

Though this is not a great solution as it would require a new re-write condition for every page and may get complicated when a lot of added pages are created. Also this makes it nearly impossible for a person to set up the site for someone else using the mod without coming back to add to the .htaccess rules every time the person creates a new page.

The issue with the 404 is a serious one for sure. If you wanted to, it would be possible to link to a competitor using this mod with a ton of incorrect links for the engines to follow. When the engines find the duplicate home page copy at each link followed they will eventually trip a duplicate content filter on the site, causing serious damage to the site's rankings... :bangin:

Though I am not advocating such action! Just bringing the problem to light.

I wish that a few people that developed the mod could look into this problem too.

It may be possible that a fix is totally doable from a hack perspective rather than a constant adjustment of the .htaccess rules.

Hey, try this! A simple solution that hasn't been tested much, but is working so far . . . put this at end of your htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Obviously this needs to be pointed towards your error page . . . and there are other error pages you might want to add:

401 - Authorization Required
400 - Bad request
403 - Forbidden
500 - Internal Server Error
404 - Wrong page

Let me know what you think.

That is the standard 404 error handler code for an htaccess redirect... Though that has not worked for my scripts...

Is this working on your site?

Nah, false alarm. Only works if the page doesn't end in html. So . . . answer is no. Sorry for my ignorance.

As far as your request for the authors to help, this is a mod that was ported from oscommerce. The guy who originally ported it did support if off and on at first, but its been a while since he has responded to any posts.

Reviewing this thread and the archived thread at http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21801

Has anyone put together a list of issues with the latest version of this mod and ZC 1.3x. More specifically 1.3.0.2? And a list of mods not supported when SEFU is installed and/or a list of workarounds and patches?

Also where is source of latest version?

Would that be in the Zen Cart downloads "archive area" (Dr Bytes version updated for ZC 1301 dated 04-22-06):
http://www.zen-cart.com/archived_contributions/other/ultimate_seo_urls_v2.101.zip

If it works well wondering why it would not be listed in the regular ZC mod downloads area?

And I find Dreamscape's previous version here (2005-07-22 – Version 2.100)
http://www.dream-scape.com/pub/zencart/Ultimate_SEO_URLs/Ultimate_SEO_URLs_v2.100.zip

Is there a newer version? It appears this mod may no longer be under development?

Same goes for Tim's SEO mod at http://www.breakmyzencart.com/sefu

Anyone take the SEFU leap with either mod on Zen Cart 1.3.0.2? If so what kind of results did you achieve? Worth the hassle? Any special "gotchas's" to overcome or be aware of?

Woody

Well, I've installed it on my test site (1.3.1) and so far everything seems to work fine. The only problems I've ran into is the lack of 404 page and a problem with custom product types (they work but if the product has attributes, the product link in the shopping cart doesn't work). I have a heavily modded cart and all seem to work, including image handler with a few tweaks.

Edit*

I'm using the mod upgraded by Dr Byte.

Hi Woodymon,

I am cursed with the 1054 Unknown column 'c.parent_id' in 'on clause' error!

I have spent the past 2 weeks with Dr Bytes updated mod and I have a 50% success rate. I upgraded a zen cart from 1.2.6 to 1.3.0.2 and USEO worked like a charm.

The next upgrade was from V1.2.7 to 1.3.0.2 and here is where the wheels fell of the cart so to speak. After reading and re-reading the posts and trying all the various fixes time and time again I find I still get the same error message using V1.3.0.2:

1054 Unknown column 'c.parent_id' in 'on clause'
in:
[SELECT c.categories_id as id, c.parent_id, cd.categories_name as cName, cd2.categories_name as pName FROM categories c, categories_description cd LEFT JOIN categories_description cd2 ON c.parent_id=cd2.categories_id AND cd2.language_id='1' WHERE c.categories_id=cd.categories_id AND cd.language_id='1']

Then I figure the heck with it let's do a squeaky clean install of both Zen V1.3.0.2 and USEO V2.101 in a test area to see if any of the mods I had installed caused the problem... the result... once again I find I get the same error message and none of the suggested bug fixes and no amount of cache resets fixed the problem.

In summary, my experiences shows there is something a miss with USEO V2.101 when upgrading from V1.2.7 to V1.3.0.2. Where as, upgrading from V1.2.6 (and possibly earlier versions) of zen seems to work AOK with Dr Bytes USEO V2.101.

Hope this is what experiences you may of been looking for...

PS if anyone has USEO working with V1.3.0.2 I'd be happy to hear how you got it to work. :)

Les :)

I have 1.3.0.2 cart installed with Ultimate SEO URLs version 2.101

Both are working great... with no problems other than the non-existent handling of 404 error re-directs.

What is your site? From your description of your error, it sounds as though one file in your SEO URL's mod is a little a miss.

You may view my work in progress at www (dot) sojournglass (dot) com - it that helps any.

Hi zacheos,

Many thanks for your reply.

I do have V2.101 USEO working with one zen 1.3.0.2 but for the life of me it just won't work on another site running zen version 1.3.0.2? Weird eh?

I even copied all the V2.101 USEO files from the working site to the non-working site but this didn't work either.

Hope you find the solution to your 404 issue. :)

hello

i have this mod working on 1.3.02 which i'll explain how to do below...a few minor issues that i'm not sure are important

adds .html to every page so if you type in yourdomain.com/contact_us it'll take you to the custom page not found but if you type yourdomain.com/contact_us.html you'll get there

doesnt like ez pages

to get the page not found to appear instead of the home page try the setting in admin > config >my store > missing page check > page not found
it may be too simple to be the answer but its all i can think of seeing as it works for me

to get ultimate seo to work on 1.3.2 go to dreamscapes site

http://www.dream-scape.com/pub/zencart/Ultimate_SEO_URLs/

download the mod and upload the files

go to installation on the dreamscape site

ignore the 2 instruction of changing application_top.php

instead go to the directory /includes/init_includes
edit the file init_templates.php

look for the location where a line which says:

include_once(DIR_WS_LANGUAGES . *$_SESSION['language'] . '.php');

insert following lines immediate after this location:

// line added for SEO v2.100

require_once(DIR_WS_CLASSES . 'seo.url.php');

if (!is_object($seo_urls)) {
$seo_urls = &new SEO_URL($_SESSION['languages_id']);
}

// end of line addition to SEO v2.100

then go back to dreamscapes site and follow the instructions 3-8

dont forget to add the paypal fix to seo.url.php

The problem: the paypal payment mod is using zen_href_link to construct the notify url. We need to tell the SEO mod to skip modifying this url.

The solution: In the class file seo.url.php we just have to add a check for ipn_main_handler.php

Find the function function href_link()

The very beginning of the function has code like:

Code:
// don't rewrite when disabled
// don't rewrite images, css, js, xml, real html files, etc
if ( ($this->attributes['SEO_ENABLED'] == 'false') || (preg_match('/(.+).(html?|xml|css|js|png|jpe?g|gif|bmp|tiff?|ico|gz|zip|rar)$/i', $page)) ) {
return $this->stock_href_link($page, $parameters, $connection, $add_session_id, true, $static, $use_dir_ws_catalog);
}

Immediately after that, add the following:

Code:
// don't rewrite the paypal IPN notify url
if ($page == 'ipn_main_handler.php') {
return $this->stock_href_link($page, $parameters, $connection, $add_session_id, true, $static, $use_dir_ws_catalog);
}

and remember to compare and merge the html_output.php if your using imagehandler2

thats all i did...thanks to zenhorocks who worked it out in another achived thread somewhere out there

hope it helps....if anyone knows how of get rid of the .html it would be much appreciated as it doesnt seem right

good luck :smile:

Hi monkeymadness,

Many thanks for taking the time to post an extensive how-to. Unfortunately it didn't fix the 1054 Unknown column issue. I'll keep trying to fix the problem and post back here if I ever get it resolved.

voltage:

The guy who originally ported it did support if off and on at first, but its been a while since he has responded to any posts.

I still do support it. I'm not around much in community support thread here because I don't have much time for that; I did when I was still a student, but not anymore. However, this thread is for community support. I certainly still offer commercial support, and have even placed a support page on the mod's mini-site to let people be aware of this since I don't participate in the community thread much anymore.

If there is little community support, there is nothing I can do about that; that task is up to the community if it so wishes to support itself. However, I still do and always will support the mod until the day I publicly announce that I'm not supporting it anymore.

Woodymon:

Is there a newer version? It appears this mod may no longer be under development?

I can assure you that it still is under development, albeit slow development. I've already done quite a bit of work on a new version, but remember I'm developing this in my spare time, and it is not the only thing I do in my spare time. I have countless projects I sometimes work on in my spare time, so unless someone or a group of people is willing to fund the rest of development on the new version, you just have to take it as it comes.

I've thought about putting up a campaign on fundable.org for the rest of development on the new version, and posted something to that effect awhile ago, and though many were quick to express interest in the new version, nobody expressed any sort of interest in helping to fund the new version. If anyone is interested in contributing to a group fund to complete development on the new version, then by all means speak up and don't lurk in the shadows. ;)

Here is how you can get 404 headers to be sent. This is from the archives, so I'll post it here.

Well first off the issue is really due to the fact that Zen Cart does not send 404 headers. If you turn SEO off or on a shop with it turned off, and you can go to index.php?main_page=gobbledeygook, you will get an HTTP 200 OK header (and most likely the index page). It's just that the issue is a bit more noticeable with SEO installed, but it exists in a plain vanilla Zen Cart install as well.

You can send 404 headers on invalid pages by doing this (for 1.3):

1. Open file includes/init_includes/init_sanitize.php
2. Find on line 105 or thereabout:

if (!is_dir(DIR_WS_MODULES . 'pages/' . $_GET['main_page'])) {

3. Add after:

header('HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found');

That will give a 404 header to user agents (including search bots) on invalid pages.

dreamscape:

I still do support it....
I can assure you that it still is under development, albeit slow development. I've already done quite a bit of work on a new version, but remember I'm developing this in my spare time, and it is not the only thing I do in my spare time..

No need to explain dream. I just saw that the last version released on your site did not support 1.3x and was dated 2005. Then I saw DrByte's fix to support 1.3x in April. And since I have not observed anything posted regarding a mod roadmap or potential To Do list that is what was meant by "did not appear under development".

We are ALL working on projects, some paid and some pro bono/volunteer. And we all have to pick and choose where to prioritize our time, in writing code, supporting code, writing documentation, posting/responding on support forums, real work, family, real life... and pick and choose which projects we can work on without ensuring funding vs. projects that must be funded for certain or up front. Such is the challenge when working for yourself and running your own biz.

Keep up the good work,

Woody

Woodymon:

And since I have not observed anything posted regarding a mod roadmap or potential To Do list

There is somewhere, but it is buried in the archive I'm sure.

Hi Dreamscape,
Its good to hear about your future plans as for this mod, and don't misunderstand my statement. My intent was not to criticize but merely point out that you don't actively support it as much as other authors do, which is perfectly fine in my opinion. We are all super-grateful for what you give and understand if you don't have time. I was just noting that it appears that your last post was made May 23rd concerning this mod.

Anyways, thanks for posting the 404 code snippet. I tried it before but it didn't seem to work, but I'll try again.

Thanks.

dreamscape:

I still do support it. I'm not around much in community support thread here because I don't have much time for that; I did when I was still a student, but not anymore. However, this thread is for community support. I certainly still offer commercial support, and have even placed a support page on the mod's mini-site to let people be aware of this since I don't participate in the community thread much anymore.

If there is little community support, there is nothing I can do about that; that task is up to the community if it so wishes to support itself. However, I still do and always will support the mod until the day I publicly announce that I'm not supporting it anymore.

voltage:

but merely point out that you don't actively support it as much as other authors do

Yes I get you were just doing that; however, I do actively support it, and have never turned a support request down, which I wanted to make clear. And I also wanted to make clear that the point of this thread is not for people to come in and post support questions to me. If you want support from me, this thread is not the channel to use. This thread is for community members to support other community members if they so choose to. That's the whole idea of "community support" (except for it to work there has to be community members willing to volunteer time to support other members)

DrByte:

Is your Xampp set up to support mod_rewrite?
Did you set your base URL in the sample .htaccess provided in the mod?

How would I find out about the mod_rewrite and if it's supported or not?

Pete

voltage:

Anyways, thanks for posting the 404 code snippet. I tried it before but it didn't seem to work, but I'll try again.

That snippet's purpose is to send a 404 header to the client, not to serve up Apache's error 404 document. You can't do that for a non-existing Zen Cart page, because all Zen Cart urls are piped through the index.php front controller, which does exist.

As soon as a bot sees a 404 header, it will know the requested page does not exist. Bots do not care about the contents of the 404 error page. Zen Cart defaults to showing the index page when the requested Zen Cart page is not found. This is not a problem if you also send error 404 headers. It's only a problem if you don't give a 404 header.

If you want a human friendly error page, since the browser doesn't openly show us the headers, then in ZC 1.3, you can change your Page Check setting from On or true to "Page Not Found" which will serve up the page_not_found template. But be warned you need the 404 header too. Otherwise, it will still send a 200 OK header.

Again, the purpose of the snippet is to send a 404 header. That's the most important part of an error 404 response, the header. If you do not send a 404 header when a page does not exist, machines & bots will not view the page as a 404 error, even if it says "not found", but will see it as being a valid page.

Never mind about the mod_rewrite I found how to turn it on.
Now I'm getting an error message like this:

Fatal error: Call to a member function Execute() on a non-object in C:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs\zencart 1.3\includes\classes\seo.install.php on line 154

Thanks,

Pete