Ultimate SEO URLs

pukman:

Hi Mastfastride,

Check your product text for invalid characters. I have had problems using invalid characters in my product text. The google feed mod has done its job properly and posted what I had typed. An example would be the british pound sign was in the text etc.

Thanks Pukman,

The funny thing is I had Google Base working great, and then I installed the Seo Urls mod and for some reason Base stopped working. I do think it has something to do with the way the htaccess is changing the URL for the Google Base. THe weird thing is I remember following links to the Author's web site for the Google base mod and downloaded one of his site. So I'm going to try re-installing the Base mod with the one off the Zen-Cart site. Thanks for your help. If for some reason I'm able to pin pooint a problem I will post it here.

Cheers,

Anyone who has the Spanish-language version, and who wants English-language version for this mod should be aware:

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=231

On the above download page for this mod, there are THREE -- count 'em, THREE -- download links for version 2.106. The English version is the third "Download Now!" link, author: [email protected], dated Jan 21 2008. I had to download all three and WinMerge compare them to finally find the right one. The first two links appear to be duplicate links to exactly the same Spanish-language zip file. I think! The third one is different. Only two files are different, if this help someone fix an existing installation:
zen_cart_folder/includes/classes/seo.install.php
zen_cart_folder/includes/classes/seo.url.php
In addition, the LEEME.txt file only exists in the Spanish version, alongside the README.txt, which sounds appropriate.

Highly confusing! Wouldn't it be better if a version number always referred to exactly the same thing? If language variations are needed, shouldn't they all be packaged in the same download zip file? Or else if they are kept in separate zips, shouldn't the version number have a language suffix or something? The descriptions on this page are also confusing and hard to follow, which doesn't make it any easier to find the right variation of the version.

So sorry about any confusion I might have caused. I found out that the problem was the conflicting Wordpress on Zencart modification and the google base feeder and had nothing to do with the SEO mod.

Again sorry for any confusion

cheers,

On another thread, a user warned against using this mod because it has many problems. The one he cited was duplicate content. Because it doesn't do 301 redirects, he claims that Google can detect both the old and new page, and in some cases may drop the site entirely out of the index.

Has this actually happened to anyone who has used this mod? It's scary, but this thread seems very active in the recent timeframe, and at least some of the respondents here seem to be pleased with their results. I'd like to hear from someone who was actually dropped out of the Google index because the Ultimate SEO URLs mod set them up for massive duplicate content problems.

(I'm not interested in "It COULD happen." I've heard that already. I'm also not interested in "It WON'T happen." Because obviously there is lots of conflicting information and misinformation running around about what duplicate content really is and how Google enforces against it. I only want to hear an actual "I was dropped" case history.)

Please either post here, or PM me on this forum.

alan_powerbrixx:

(I'm not interested in "It COULD happen." I've heard that already. I'm also not interested in "It WON'T happen." Because obviously there is lots of conflicting information and misinformation running around about what duplicate content really is and how Google enforces against it. I only want to hear an actual "I was dropped" case history.)

Would you be interested in what Google has to say?

http://forum.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?t=102776&highlight=google+duplicate

Suggestion to read the entire thread but you could jump right to Post #9, which quotes Google directly. :smile:

alan_powerbrixx:

On another thread, a user warned against using this mod because it has many problems. The one he cited was duplicate content. Because it doesn't do 301 redirects, he claims that Google can detect both the old and new page, and in some cases may drop the site entirely out of the index.

Has this actually happened to anyone who has used this mod? It's scary, but this thread seems very active in the recent timeframe, and at least some of the respondents here seem to be pleased with their results. I'd like to hear from someone who was actually dropped out of the Google index because the Ultimate SEO URLs mod set them up for massive duplicate content problems.

(I'm not interested in "It COULD happen." I've heard that already. I'm also not interested in "It WON'T happen." Because obviously there is lots of conflicting information and misinformation running around about what duplicate content really is and how Google enforces against it. I only want to hear an actual "I was dropped" case history.)

Please either post here, or PM me on this forum.

Website Rob:

Would you be interested in what Google has to say?

http://forum.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?t=102776&highlight=google+duplicate

Suggestion to read the entire thread but you could jump right to Post #9, which quotes Google directly. :smile:

We had this happen a couple of years ago when this module was first released. A page went from PR 3 to a PR 1 in a matter of a couple of months. In turn we found that the problem was in fact multiple URL's being indexed to the same landing page (ideally the same page).

The idea is "full circle."

Zen Cart uses certain constraints when displaying dynamic data. This caused some of the pages to list things like new products, featured products, etc. inconsistently.

Since then we've turned to this SEO Solution for Zen Cart.

We understand that this is a paid solution, but it doesn't present the headaches that we've seen with Ultimate SEO and takes care of far more pages than does Ultimate SEO.

Hope this helps.

ok I have 2 installs of this module, both from the same files (I used SVN to get them both from the same repo)
on one install the file names for products and categories are dash delimited, and on the other they are not. I would like both to be comma delimited.

I just installed the latest version 2.1.06 and it looks like the install went ok, but when I go to admin - configure there is no option for SEO URLs.

Anyone else have this problem or know what the issue is?

Thanks,

Tina

For some reason, I found that I had to follow a link on the store site, to a category or to a product, maybe not even that specfically. Just link to a page within the store. Then the SEO URLs showed up on the admin Configuration menu. Anyway, that's what I THINK I remember happening.

alan_powerbrixx:

For some reason, I found that I had to follow a link on the store site, to a category or to a product, maybe not even that specfically. Just link to a page within the store. Then the SEO URLs showed up on the admin Configuration menu. Anyway, that's what I THINK I remember happening.

Thanks for the info. :D

I cleared my cache went to the site - clicked thru a few products then went back to admin and lol and behold, the SEO URLs was in the admin - but it is in SPANISH - :cry:

Ok - so my BF is from Spain, no problem for me to translate - but this install is for a client who doesn't have a spanish speaking BF lol.

Off to find the english version (which file do I need??)

Thanks,

Tina

See post 342 on this thread above.

alan_powerbrixx:

See post 342 on this thread above.

Ok. I saw!

I downloaded the version from the third link. Verified that the includes/classes files are in English, uploaded to the site thru FTP, cleared cache again and guess what???

Still the Spanish version! :wacko:

Gonna walk away from it and then look at it later - maybe the gods of foreign languages will take pity on me and fix it in my absence!

If it's the admin settings that are at fault, I think it would be the SQL you want to be looking at.

Hi, I installed SEO Urls, everything works well, but links in navigations (categories) are linking to /-c-cPath.html which shows just homepage. Any ideas how to solve that?

alan_powerbrixx:

Anyone who has the Spanish-language version, and who wants English-language version for this mod should be aware:

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=231

On the above download page for this mod, there are THREE -- count 'em, THREE -- download links for version 2.106. The English version is the third "Download Now!" link, author: [email protected], dated Jan 21 2008. I had to download all three and WinMerge compare them to finally find the right one. The first two links appear to be duplicate links to exactly the same Spanish-language zip file. I think! The third one is different. Only two files are different, if this help someone fix an existing installation:
zen_cart_folder/includes/classes/seo.install.php
zen_cart_folder/includes/classes/seo.url.php
In addition, the LEEME.txt file only exists in the Spanish version, alongside the README.txt, which sounds appropriate.

Highly confusing! Wouldn't it be better if a version number always referred to exactly the same thing? If language variations are needed, shouldn't they all be packaged in the same download zip file? Or else if they are kept in separate zips, shouldn't the version number have a language suffix or something? The descriptions on this page are also confusing and hard to follow, which doesn't make it any easier to find the right variation of the version.

That didn't fix mine. Is there anything in the db that needs to be removed? I've tried installing/reinstalling the entire package time and again and it's STILL showing up spanish in the admin. This is driving me NUTS.

Why on EARTH didn't whoever uploaded the Spanish version make it a completely separate d/l with "Spanish" in the title??? I've been fighting what should have been a straight forward install for 4 hours so far this morning.

IMHO it's easier to learn Spanish than to try and fix this...:blink:

At least it is functional, albeit en espanol

mydanilo:

I noticed most of the problems people have with SEO url's is related to the .htaccess file.

Here are some basics:

For the Ultimate SEO purpose, .htaccess need to go in the folder that it needs to control.

This has nothing to do with the root /public_html/ in your hosting account just with the location relative to the domains root.

Your domain root might be /public_html/mydomain but test zencart is installed /public_html/mydomain/testzen

So your .htaccess will be put in /public_html/mydomain/testzen
In this case you would have to set RewriteBase /testzen/

.htaccess RewriteBase needs to be set relative to the folder structure of the domain.

If installed in a sub directory of the domain, RewriteBase /subdir/

If installed in a sub directory of the domain, RewriteBase /

I hope this will help.

Hi,

my shop is installed in a folder of my domain (like this:https://www.mydomain.com/shop) So what would I need to edit in the .htaccess file?

I can't figure it out? HELP! I am not sure if this is the cause that I can't get further than the main page of the shop. All other pages are currently "page not found" I need a quick answer so that I can decide if to run a backup today and get rid of this add on or not.

Thanks

RewriteBase /shop/

Your USEO .htaccess file would also put in the 'shop' dir.

signs:

Is there anything in the db that needs to be removed?

Yes, I didn't think about that before. When you first link on the store site with mod's php files uploaded, it installs itself into the admin tables of the db. Just changing the php files doesn't change the db portion of the mod. You would need to edit the configuration and configuration_group tables to delete the records that are specific to this mod. (Carefully, of course, after backing up.) I haven't looked to see what identifying values you might look for. Hopefully, this is enough hint to get you started. You may need to examine the php files in the mod to find the place where it adds its records to the database, to learn just what it changed. Once you've deleted the Spanish records, uploaded the English phps, and linked again on the store, the English admin entries should install themselves. (I haven't done this, but that's what makes sense to me. Good luck, Jim...If you are caught or captured, the Secretary will disavow...:wink:)

And how are you verifing that, Alan?

I use USEO and to my knowledge, there are no database changes; which I have verified. That applies to any version / language. Just one of the nice things about this mod.