54 replies to this topic

[professorFrink]

toyicebear,

Thanks for the good thread and comparing the different URL rewriting options.  A newb at osCommerce it is a bit overwhelming to me to pick which contribs to use.  I really like the use of clean URLs, and it is a big concern to me, so I'm paying particular attention to these threads.  My favorite right now looks like SEF URLs (from BlueYon/Daniel Kerr), I have recently installed osc on my web server, and the osc sef seems to work fine, and for your other points, it looks like I shouldn't have a problem with installing it.

When I read the support thread for that contribution, there seems to be a lot of probmlems with it?  Now, I know most people who post are the people who have problems, and if it works fine people don't post anything.  So my question is does that contribution usually work or are there a lot of problems?  Thanks!

[toyicebear]

professorFrink, on Dec 30 2005, 03:51 PM, said:

toyicebear,

Thanks for the good thread and comparing the different URL rewriting options.  A newb at osCommerce it is a bit overwhelming to me to pick which contribs to use.  I really like the use of clean URLs, and it is a big concern to me, so I'm paying particular attention to these threads.  My favorite right now looks like SEF URLs (from BlueYon/Daniel Kerr), I have recently installed osc on my web server, and the osc sef seems to work fine, and for your other points, it looks like I shouldn't have a problem with installing it.

When I read the support thread for that contribution, there seems to be a lot of probmlems with it?  Now, I know most people who post are the people who have problems, and if it works fine people don't post anything.  So my question is does that contribution usually work or are there a lot of problems?  Thanks!

Hi, this contrib works providing you follow these guidlines first...

1. Go to your shops admin and set Use Sef Urls to true , then go to your shop and navigate around aswell as trying to purchase something and go through the whole checkout process....

If you get any errors while doing this , you can not use this contrib.


2. If you use a shared ssl certificate , you can not use this contrib due to not being able to use force cookies with shared ssl.


3. You must have unike names for categories, sub-categories and products...not even 1 name can be the same for any of them.


If this is ok at your set-up , then you should be able to use SEF URLs (from BlueYon/Daniel Kerr) without any problems.

Just follow the install instructions carefully.



If your set-up is not compatible with the mentioned points, you should choose Ultimate SEO Urls instead.

[Sharon_U]

Great thread, and being new to this -I've read it many times trying to understand which url format is best! My goal is to have a top ranking for some of the more unusual beads I specialize in and other jewelry component keywords that are very specific (and advanced jewelry designers would know these terms). The ability to rewrite the urls or add some easy title tags like with html sounds easy enough, but I'm still a little fuzzy.

I must ask this question: Is http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2823/ by moepstar a good choice? I was looking around for something less challenging since I've noticed error posts from another thread regarding chemo's versions, which this one is based. Without paid support, I'm not sure I like risking errors on my site at this point.

The idea of this mod looks promising: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2626/. Any comments on this one?

Any advise for a super simple contrib. that I can use is greatly appreciated, aside from my needing to work on better content (natural language describing the products). I apologize if this is getting off topic however I feel there is much food for thought, inviting my questions.

Sincerely,
Sharon

(If you need for ref, my site is My Webpage.)

[toyicebear]

Sharon_U, on Feb 14 2006, 05:24 PM, said:

Great thread, and being new to this -I've read it many times trying to understand which url format is best! My goal is to have a top ranking for some of the more unusual beads I specialize in and other jewelry component keywords that are very specific (and advanced jewelry designers would know these terms). The ability to rewrite the urls or add some easy title tags like with html sounds easy enough, but I'm still a little fuzzy.

I must ask this question: Is http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2823/ by moepstar a good choice? I was looking around for something less challenging since I've noticed error posts from another thread regarding chemo's versions, which this one is based. Without paid support, I'm not sure I like risking errors on my site at this point.

The idea of this mod looks promising: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2626/. Any comments on this one?

Any advise for a super simple contrib. that I can use is greatly appreciated, aside from my needing to work on better content (natural language describing the products). I apologize if this is getting off topic however I feel there is much food for thought, inviting my questions.

Sincerely,
Sharon

(If you need for ref, my site is My Webpage.)

Contribution 2626 , Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Advanced URLs for osCommerce

This one is very nice and let you customice your urls quite a bit , but it requires that you do have some php knowledge.

Contribution 2823, Ultimate SEO URLs

This one gives you a nice url format with product/cat name included with a very easy install, and in addition it offers caching to make it as fast as possible.


Last but not leased..... individual meta info and titles + page content is more important than the url format.........

Edited by toyicebear, 15 February 2006 - 03:13 AM.

[Sharon_U]

Hi again Toyice Bear, thanks for your reply. I searched the contributions for individual meta and decided to use the Custom META Tags per ITEM - Contribution by Randelia. Very unfortunate - it seems the support thread is not getting replies, so I'd like a chance to ask for some help here..

The titles <title></title> assigned to the categories are working, however  the individual product titles (aquamarine beads, etc.) are not working. They are pointing to the default for the main page. Frustration - because I HAVE entered into the DB.

What do you suggest at this point? Anyone reading this care to take a stab at helping me?

Thanks so much.
Sincerely,
Sharon

[toyicebear]

Sharon_U, on Mar 1 2006, 01:09 AM, said:

Hi again Toyice Bear, thanks for your reply. I searched the contributions for individual meta and decided to use the Custom META Tags per ITEM - Contribution by Randelia. Very unfortunate - it seems the support thread is not getting replies, so I'd like a chance to ask for some help here..

The titles <title></title> assigned to the categories are working, however  the individual product titles (aquamarine beads, etc.) are not working. They are pointing to the default for the main page. Frustration - because I HAVE entered into the DB.

What do you suggest at this point? Anyone reading this care to take a stab at helping me?

Thanks so much.
Sincerely,
Sharon

That one i have not tried that contrib yet..so its hard for me to say.....

If you are using Search Engne Friendly URLS from Blueyon, then the explanation is simple..... all the meta tags contributions , exept Meta Tag Controller Support , have to be rewritten slightly to alowe for the fact that the sef from blueyon gets the product info from the index.php file instead of from the product_info.php file.

For some of the other seo/sef contributions there is sometimes also a need to rewrite the way teh 'id" for pages are fetched.

If i get the time i will have a closer look at Randelias contrib....so i can answear questions regarding that one directly too....

Othervise i recomend one of these 3 meta tags solutions, the last 2 have very easy install procedures.

Header Tags Controller

or

c-dynamic meta tags

or

Meta Tag Controller Support

Edited by toyicebear, 01 March 2006 - 02:57 AM.

[Sharon_U]

Thanks Toyice Bear! Actually I'm not using Blueyon's SEFU, just plain Randelia's. And I did notice the urls have changed/are simplified -a side benefit I was not expecting. I'm sorry I'm not a code person as far as the id pages go. It's all noodles to me but your "get the product info from..." might be a clue we can troubleshoot.

Thanks again! If you want to post again here I'll check back too. I may just pick another meta contrib.
Sincerely,
Sharon

[toyicebear]

Sharon_U, on Mar 1 2006, 04:07 AM, said:

Thanks Toyice Bear! Actually I'm not using Blueyon's SEFU, just plain Randelia's. And I did notice the urls have changed/are simplified -a side benefit I was not expecting. I'm sorry I'm not a code person as far as the id pages go. It's all noodles to me but your "get the product info from..." might be a clue we can troubleshoot.

Thanks again! If you want to post again here I'll check back too. I may just pick another meta contrib.
Sincerely,
Sharon

Att...that contrib should not have changed your urls in any way....

Have you enabled search engine friendly urls in your admin?

( located in your admin configuration>>my shop )

If you have done so, try to set them to false and set if the metas work correctly after that......

Edited by toyicebear, 02 March 2006 - 03:42 AM.

[Sharon_U]

THAT WORKED!!! (my changing the setting to false). I'm so thrilled. Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you? Look at a site, test something?

Sincerely,
Sharon

[captainyee]

Quick question for anyone who can help a newbie like myself...

The instructions to setting up SEF URLs requires that a index.php file is copied to the catalog directory - I've made changes to my own index.php file already so how and is this replacement necessary?  I do not want to replace my current index.php file.

Thanks!

[toyicebear]

captainyee, on Mar 5 2006, 05:00 PM, said:

Quick question for anyone who can help a newbie like myself...

The instructions to setting up SEF URLs requires that a index.php file is copied to the catalog directory - I've made changes to my own index.php file already so how and is this replacement necessary?  I do not want to replace my current index.php file.

Thanks!

Blueyons SEF URLs merges the product_info.php and the index.php files together. When SEF URL is installed the products are then showed from index.php and not from product_info.php .

IE. you will have to further modify your own index.php with the changes from SEF URLS or replace it with the index.php file from the contribution.

[khoking]

Hi toyicebear,
   Thank you very much for all the links in your signature! They are very good resources for me as beginner in OSc  

My question...I have my site www.ShaShinKi.com operates for nearly 3 months since Christmas 2005. Currently my page rank is 5/10. I have googlebot crawled on my site for around 300MB per month. I have googled indexed me on the first week after I submited my URL to them.

I have just installed header_tag contribution few days ago, and now I am looking at the SEO URL.

Should I install SEO URL? I am worried that all the indexed page by google or MSN bot (around 150MB per month) are gone and making my page rank worse...

Appreciate your advice on this  

[toyicebear]

khoking, on Mar 23 2006, 02:27 AM, said:

Hi toyicebear,
   Thank you very much for all the links in your signature! They are very good resources for me as beginner in OSc  

My question...I have my site www.ShaShinKi.com operates for nearly 3 months since Christmas 2005. Currently my page rank is 5/10. I have googlebot crawled on my site for around 300MB per month. I have googled indexed me on the first week after I submited my URL to them.

I have just installed header_tag contribution few days ago, and now I am looking at the SEO URL.

Should I install SEO URL? I am worried that all the indexed page by google or MSN bot (around 150MB per month) are gone and making my page rank worse...

Appreciate your advice on this  

First you do not need to install seo/sef urls the search engines does index and show your pages in the results just fine without it too.

But if you still want to do it , my suggestion then since your site has been live for awhile and has links already indexed  is to use Ultimate Seo Urls because it has a build in 301 redirect system for old urls.

[khoking]

toyicebear, on Mar 23 2006, 01:03 PM, said:

First you do not need to install seo/sef urls the search engines does index and show your pages in the results just fine without it too.

But if you still want to do it , my suggestion then since your site has been live for awhile and has links already indexed  is to use Ultimate Seo Urls because it has a build in 301 redirect system for old urls.

Finally I decided to installed this Ultimate SEO. Very easy to install and my old urls still work!

Great contribution and many thanks to toyicebear for the recommendation and guide!  

[gmltw]

toyicebear, on Feb 28 2006, 08:56 PM, said:

That one i have not tried that contrib yet..so its hard for me to say.....

If you are using Search Engne Friendly URLS from Blueyon, then the explanation is simple..... all the meta tags contributions , exept Meta Tag Controller Support , have to be rewritten slightly to alowe for the fact that the sef from blueyon gets the product info from the index.php file instead of from the product_info.php file.

For some of the other seo/sef contributions there is sometimes also a need to rewrite the way teh 'id" for pages are fetched.

If i get the time i will have a closer look at Randelias contrib....so i can answear questions regarding that one directly too....

Othervise i recomend one of these 3 meta tags solutions, the last 2 have very easy install procedures.

Header Tags Controller

or

c-dynamic meta tags

or

Meta Tag Controller Support

Hello toyicebear,

Could you do a similar review of the meta tag controllers or if one has already been done, could you post us a link to it here. This SEO contributions review you have here has been very helpful and appreciated.

If you could comment on the meta tag contributions as well it would be great.

Thanks!

[toyicebear]

gmltw, on Feb 27 2007, 01:58 PM, said:

Hello toyicebear,

Could you do a similar review of the meta tag controllers or if one has already been done, could you post us a link to it here. This SEO contributions review you have here has been very helpful and appreciated.

If you could comment on the meta tag contributions as well it would be great.

Thanks!

In my signature below click on Meta tags for your osc shop.....

[chrisgeek]

Anyone use Nimmit's SEF recently?

I'm thinking of using it and want to make sure it works on the latest OSC version.

Also, if I were to switch to Nimmit's, would I have to uninstall Ultimate SEO URLs by Chemo?

Thank you for your help!

[bertie]

Hello All,
Does anyone know the reason why (having installed Ultimate SEO version 2.1d) that no internal product links are working on my site (400 error). Then, when I disable SEOs in my admin control panel, all's well again?
My Admin directory has a .htaccess file in it but my Admin directory is not inside the catalog directory, so I have uploaded the .htaccess that came with the Ultimate SEO install to my catalog directory. Could that be the problem?
I read the comments in the .htaccess about configuring Apache. When I stopped crying, I decided to ignore the advice to mess with something else I don't understand in case I broke that as well.
Any advice, patronising or otherwise, much appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul

[toyicebear]

chrisgeek, on Apr 18 2007, 05:35 AM, said:

Anyone use Nimmit's SEF recently?

I'm thinking of using it and want to make sure it works on the latest OSC version.

Also, if I were to switch to Nimmit's, would I have to uninstall Ultimate SEO URLs by Chemo?

Thank you for your help!

Nimmit sef is no longer supported by the author

It can be used with the latest oscommerce 2.2 but you are more or less on your own fixing any problems which might crop up...

If you want to use it, yes you would have to uninstall ultimate seo urls

As an alternative you might want to check out the new SEO-G

[toyicebear]

bertie, on Apr 20 2007, 11:10 AM, said:

Hello All,
Does anyone know the reason why (having installed Ultimate SEO version 2.1d) that no internal product links are working on my site (400 error). Then, when I disable SEOs in my admin control panel, all's well again?
My Admin directory has a .htaccess file in it but my Admin directory is not inside the catalog directory, so I have uploaded the .htaccess that came with the Ultimate SEO install to my catalog directory. Could that be the problem?
I read the comments in the .htaccess about configuring Apache. When I stopped crying, I decided to ignore the advice to mess with something else I don't understand in case I broke that as well.
Any advice, patronising or otherwise, much appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul

1. check that your hosting/server supports mod rewrite

2. check the .htaccess file is correct based on the instructions from ultimate seo urls