altoid

@suzgems1
Suzanne...the original error message you got, I just ran into that as well when working on taking a 2.2 shop to ultimately a 2.3.3 shop.   During the export / import process with the database, I grabbed the wrong SQL file, with got me what you showed as an error.

I started over from scratch, the second time around grabbing the correct dataset and that got me on track.

As noted you do have to carefully upgrade the 2.2 database.

To get the database from to 2.3 from 2.2
http://forums.oscommerce.com/topic/369330-any-easy-way-to-move-customer-from-22-rc2a-to-231/
then
http://library.oscommerce.com/Online&en&oscom_2_3&release_notes&v2_3_2

Don't know if this exactly applies to your situation but there it is.

how about a sitemap (not xml) in the core?  the type humans can click and see links to categories/products throughout the shop.

burt, on 08 May 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

Lots of variables there Burt so it's hard to say why for sure but It'd be interesting to have a site survey of users sometime and see where the osC participants are/  What percentage of professional coders, shop owners, dabblers and so on.

Maybe some don't understand what concept of the core exactly is and what's being asked here.  Seasoned osC participants will know, but if you asked a newbie or even somepne who's been around for a short while what the core is you'll get the deer in the headlights look i think.  

Maybe a fair portion don't know or aren't confident enough about SEO to speak up.  That combined with so many varied opinions on what proper SEO is right here on osC such as where someone posts that such and such is critical to SEO, then along comes the next guy refuting that.

It's frustrating and befuddling I think, to folks like me,  who want to learn and have to filter out this or that BS out.

The post you made that started this, with the SEO copywriting link, kept me busy most of the day yesterday boning up on those 10 points.   Learned a lot,..I wasn't even aware of the longtail keyword concept.  But I'll be using it.  But I only spent my time researching the stuff in that llink because I consider you a reliable source.

Back to the point, maybe it's just that the average Joe or Josephine just doesn't know enough to feel comfortable to chime in.

I'm thrilled that the SEO modifications are being considered.   Not only will it help the shop owner but help the image of the osCommerce brand itself.

Gyakutsuki, on 07 May 2013 - 11:55 PM, said:

I'm not familiar with this particular tool but the concept, of feed back to the webmaster on the page SEO content would be handy. It would be nice if it was on the admin side so it would be right there as you work on your pages.

Thanks Gary, the timing of this post is spot on for me as over the past several days I've set aside other matters to bone up on and work on SEO on a couple of my sites.  Thing is there's so many different takes on what's the "best way" that folks like me, still relatively new to the game, are befuddled.

For example after an hour or so of googling I came up with several "best ways" to write a  title tag.  One says no more than 70 characters another says up to 80 is better.  

I've settled on using the SEO Doctor add on and am chipping away page by page to get the SEO score as close to perfect as possible

Since I'm no expert maybe some of the things I'm doing to make SEO Doctor happy may not be all that important but I am doing them anyway.

Some things I've done to the code to come along is

- make sure there's is a h2 tag somewhere there on the page.  My OOB OSC code did do that.
- got ride of the model number on the product info page as it was showing up in the h1 tag and that didn't make sense or wasn't needed for the type of products I have.  Meaning I don't think humans are going to keyword the model number to search for my product line.

One thing I can't do anything about because of LOCS  (lack of coding skills) is address the ALT image tag issue that comes up when you use more than one image per item in an OSC 2.3.3 shop level.  When I have more than one image SEO Doctor points on that there is an image with no ALT tag

SEO Doctor initially told me I had some page indexing issues due to canonicalization.  So I removed an add on that handled that and use the built in canonical tool that comes with 2.3.3.  That fixed some things up for the most part.  However when I sort a category, two things happened that SEO Doctor flags out.

One...SEO Doctor doesn't like the canonical URL that results for some reason
Two...SEO Doctor notes that my SEO friendly URL now has a "sort" and "page" at the end.  

Not sure how big a deal either of those flags are but that's what I am seeing.

So anyway...maybe some of the above can be address with core updating.

As well, I reviewed the link you gave and already see I have some hours ahead of me to bone up on SEO copywriting.

Thanks