[Done 1.3.9] noindex,nofollow mistakenly appears on home page in certain situation

I'm not sure whether or not this is a bug ~ but it could certainly do some bugging!

My store's home page has the line "<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />". I did NOT put it there! I'm just glad I saw it while my store is still on my personal computer and not after months of wondering why search engines won't index my store's home page. I haven't seen this on any other pages but I am definitely going to look before my store goes live.

Can anyone tell me what file I need to modify to change this? I can't find it. :cry:

I'm also rather curious as to why it says this. If it's not a bug, what is the reason for it?

Must be your install/customization of ??? as the following is from a stock default install if 1.3.8: and no mention of robots

<head>
<title>Zen Cart!, The Art of E-commerce</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Hardware Software DVD Movies Gift Certificates Big Linked Test Examples Free Call Stuff Test 10% by Attrib Test 10% A Top Level Cat Sale Percentage Sale Deduction Sale New Price Big Unlinked New v1.2 Music Documents Mixed Product Types Test ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping " />
<meta name="description" content="Zen Cart! :  - Hardware Software DVD Movies Gift Certificates Big Linked Test Examples Free Call Stuff Test 10% by Attrib Test 10% A Top Level Cat Sale Percentage Sale Deduction Sale New Price Big Unlinked New v1.2 Music Documents Mixed Product Types Test ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping" />
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" />
<meta name="author" content="The Zen Cart™ Team and others" />
<meta name="generator" content="shopping cart program by Zen Cart™, http://www.zen-cart.com eCommerce" />

Interesting. I can't imagine that I would have added that line myself (I certainly had no reason to!), so I don't know what I did to cause it.

It's a bug, which only occurs in certain circumstances ... lemme dig up the previous report ...

There's a bug which only shows when you have
Admin->Configuration->Layout Settings->Categories - Always Show on Main Page = 1

To fix it, edit your /includes/init_includes/init_add_crumbs.php file, by adding the indicated code, as shown in the highlighted area:```
if ($categories->RecordCount() > 0) {
$breadcrumb->add($categories->fields['categories_name'], zen_href_link(FILENAME_DEFAULT, 'cPath=' . implode('_', array_slice($cPath_array, 0, ($i+1)))));
} elseif(SHOW_CATEGORIES_ALWAYS == 0) {
// if invalid, set the robots noindex/nofollow for this page
$robotsNoIndex = true;
break;
}

Thanks!

Not being a programmer I have a dumb question should there be a space between the "else" and the "if" or does it not matter?

Thanks
Dave G

DrByte:

There's a bug which only shows when you have
Admin->Configuration->Layout Settings->Categories - Always Show on Main Page = 1

To fix it, edit your /includes/init_includes/init_add_crumbs.php file, by adding the indicated code, as shown in the highlighted area:```
if ($categories->RecordCount() > 0) {
$breadcrumb->add($categories->fields['categories_name'], zen_href_link(FILENAME_DEFAULT, 'cPath=' . implode('_', array_slice($cPath_array, 0, ($i+1)))));
} elseif(SHOW_CATEGORIES_ALWAYS == 0) {
// if invalid, set the robots noindex/nofollow for this page
$robotsNoIndex = true;
break;
}

Dave G:

Not being a programmer I have a dumb question should there be a space between the "else" and the "if" or does it not matter?

Thanks
Dave G

**elseif **and **else if **are acceptable as well

So, to answer your question: it doesn't matter.

Thanks
I like learning a little bit each day, one day I'll be dangerous :-)

Dave G

keeping:

I'm not sure whether or not this is a bug ~ but it could certainly do some bugging!

My store's home page has the line "<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />". I did NOT put it there! I'm just glad I saw it while my store is still on my personal computer and not after months of wondering why search engines won't index my store's home page. I haven't seen this on any other pages but I am definitely going to look before my store goes live.

Can anyone tell me what file I need to modify to change this? I can't find it. :cry:

I'm also rather curious as to why it says this. If it's not a bug, what is the reason for it?

Hi Everyone,
I have the same problem as Keeping, and my site has the "noindex, nofollow" thing on my meta tags. In another post, i mentioned that after i edit it to become "index, follow", my site got index but the problem is it index everything, including things i dun want to be indexed like login, shopping cart, and even my blog/wp-contents/plugin!

On the advice of a great forum participant, i came to this post and edited the init files to include that extra line. Now that everything is back to normal, when i click view source, my meta tags now again have the "noindex, nofollow".

Question i wanna ask is will it result in my site being deindexed? And will the pages that are not supposed to be indexed, not be indexed?

I have seen many websites with "noindex, nofollow" and their sites seem to work fine, but i am not sure, and i really want to confirm it in Zencart Forum. I wonder if there are many other people like me with this question?

Can someone advice pls?

Bugger... I only have just seen this after having had my site live since march. And I only spotted it by chance when I was viewing source. I guess I should visit the forum more often in future.

However, I did a site: search and found that google had 147 of my pages from this particular site listed. So now I'm confused, I've had the noindex, nofollow there for months but still my site seems to have been picked up by google. Is that normal? Is it just my site is know about but no links carry any weight???

Confused!?!