Jump to content
  • Checkout
  • Login
  • Get in touch

osCommerce

The e-commerce.

a different approach to seo with oscommerce


andy39surf

Recommended Posts

i'm currently building an os commerce site for someone who already has a static site that i have worked on over the past few years. my first thought when i came accross oscommerce was to integrate it into the static site rather than use oscommerce as a replacement for it.

 

this means that i will have about 30-40 static pages giving customers in depth info about products and some general info about products in general ( the site will sell tyres ) I have about 10 pages on the existing site that already have a google pr of 3. I will be keeping them and changing some to hub pages for each topic. My client already has an established business with a tyre depot so some of the content will relate to his services as well.

 

the static site looks and feels the same as my oscommerce part of the site, though i have used a slightly different colour theme to differentiate the two and there are lots of links between the two.

 

anyway to my point: i have been surprised that i haven't found any live shops that have adopted a similar approach. it seems to me that i have so many more opportunities to optimise my site and make it more informative for users. i would welcome any views on this one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By adding static pages, you are effectively breaking the shop, since it relies on session ID's and those can't be used on static pages. The pages can be added as html or there are contributions, like the Article Manager, that accomplish the same thing. Many sites add extra pages. they just do it in an oscommerce-friendly way.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks for that, i had no idea. i will have to think again on this one. my pages are static and i have just tried out my test site and the sessions don't work as you said. the problem is we want to host an information site on the same domain for other services the business offers. do you have any urls of sites that have done it properly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What if you add static pages but have them open in a new browser? Other than that, you would need to add them as php. Note that the whole page can be html, except for the <?php and ?> at the beginning of the file and the file will have to have the php extension.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What if you add static pages but have them open in a new browser? Other than that, you would need to add them as php. Note that the whole page can be html, except for the <?php and ?> at the beginning of the file and the file will have to have the php extension.

 

Jack

 

Would that be enough code to maintain the sessions?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to get in on this discussion as well. I have an existing site and I have JavaScript, HTML, and some XML on it. All works and I have information pages, news pages, etc. Now I want to sell products and have not found an easy way to get my content pages on the site. Do I have to add a module to my OSCommerce code or do I simply make php pages (using my code in the middle between the tags) and post them in some dir? Where can I get documentation on this.

 

Sorry, I have to ask what may be such a simple question, but I have only had the cart for a few days now and need to start somewhere.

 

Cheers,

Charles

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What if you add static pages but have them open in a new browser? Other than that, you would need to add them as php. Note that the whole page can be html, except for the <?php and ?> at the beginning of the file and the file will have to have the php extension.

 

Jack

 

Hi Jack, how about creating the new php pages, using osc external sessions by chemo as well as mod rewrite to maintain the already existing page ranking of the html versions?

 

Don't know. Just throwing it out there. I have Chemo's external sessions working on my site along with Ultimate SEO's which use apache mod rewrite to open the proper php pages under html extensions. I couldn't code any of this for the life of me :huh: , but it may be the answer in this situation?

 

Sheri

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Musk is absolutly correct. Have your programmer modify your URL rewrite to rewrite the info pages unlimmited contrib or article manager. If you have a page called for example: about, simply name that page about and the rewrite will handle the rest. You can then control your layout / html formating from the admin using a nifty wysiwyg (fckEditor or simmiliar).

 

The URL rewrite should be directed to rewrite the pages using an .htm or .html (or php) suffix. If your older pages are asp (or an incompatible file type for your server etc), you can easily setup some permanent 301 redirects in your htaccess file.

 

To add butter on your toast, you can then install the Header tags controller contrib.

 

Youll now have a search engine friendly page without getting into an updating and maintenance nightmare.

 

hope that helps.

 

good luck.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would that be enough code to maintain the sessions?
Yes. The SID is added before the page is loaded so it doesn't matter wha is on the page. The only requirement is that the page has to be called with the tep_href_link function.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to get in on this discussion as well. I have an existing site and I have JavaScript, HTML, and some XML on it. All works and I have information pages, news pages, etc. Now I want to sell products and have not found an easy way to get my content pages on the site. Do I have to add a module to my OSCommerce code or do I simply make php pages (using my code in the middle between the tags) and post them in some dir? Where can I get documentation on this.

 

Sorry, I have to ask what may be such a simple question, but I have only had the cart for a few days now and need to start somewhere.

 

Cheers,

Charles

You can just add them as mentioned above: change the name of the file to make it a php file and include the php delimiters at the top of the file.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Jack, how about creating the new php pages, using osc external sessions by chemo as well as mod rewrite to maintain the already existing page ranking of the html versions?

 

Don't know. Just throwing it out there. I have Chemo's external sessions working on my site along with Ultimate SEO's which use apache mod rewrite to open the proper php pages under html extensions. I couldn't code any of this for the life of me :huh: , but it may be the answer in this situation?

 

Sheri

That wasn't really the intention of the contribution but if it works for you then there is nothing wrong with it. Other than, of course, needlessly complicating the situation. There is no difference to the SE's whether or not a file is html or php. It seems far easier to be me to rename the page and be done with it.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can just add them as mentioned above: change the name of the file to make it a php file and include the php delimiters at the top of the file.

 

Jack

 

Thank you so much Jack. This seems a lot more simple. So if I may ask a few more dumb questions that will get me on my way to a quicker start I would appreciate it if you could answer them for me. Really appreciate it... :'(

 

Here are my question:

It does not matter if the page is .php, .htm or .html correct. It will show up just the same as long as the <?php and ?> are in the file? Is this correct?

 

Next is: if the customer has items in their cart and then goes from the catalog page where he/she is ordering a product and then clicks on a link that takes them to a page that has info about our company, and then clicks to go back to the order page, will he/she lose all their data (order)? Do I need to add anything to stop this from happening?

 

You had refered me to the info about using the tep_href_link function. From what I gather here, as long as a page is called using this function the SID (session ID?) will be loaded and they should be able to jump back and forth around the site and not lose data. Can you give me an example of the syntax to use this and what file to call it from?

 

I hope this is not asking too much. You probabaly have better things to do than help out beginners to OSC, but I would really appreciate it.

 

Cheers,

Charles

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know what you mean by "It does not matter if the page is .php, .htm or .html." Matters to who, what?

 

You can switch back and forth between pages that are created this way with the browser buttons. If you want to do it on that page, you will have to had php code to go to the file so allow it to go to another page in an oscommerce related way.

 

The tep_href_link funciton is called from almost every page of the shop. Just open one to find an example.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That wasn't really the intention of the contribution but if it works for you then there is nothing wrong with it. Other than, of course, needlessly complicating the situation. There is no difference to the SE's whether or not a file is html or php. It seems far easier to be me to rename the page and be done with it.

 

Jack

 

Hi Jack,

 

I'm a little confused. Not sure which contrib I am not using as intended. I didn't know that I was complicating my website. Maybe I didn't explain it properly. My shop is in a folder, I use external sessions to maintain the sid even when cookies are turned off as a person browses from root to catalog and back again and I use ultimate seo's to rid my catalog addresses of the many parameters that get attached to the pages that come as default oscommerce. I couldn't care less whether they are .html or .whatever. It's just the way Bobby created his contrib.

 

The reason I brought up the external sessions and the mod rewrite as it is done in Ul SEO is because I understood from the original poster that his client already has an established website with decent page rankings, which happen to be in html. If he were to change these to .php and upload them, would they not be considered new pages? and thus he would not loose the rankings? If he uses mod rewrite to redirect the established pages to the "new" .php pages then he doesn't loose the rankings. That's what I was thinking of.

 

As for the external sessions, he has the established pages in a slightly different design and not in his shop folder. If he wants people to be able to browse back and forth between product/information and still maintain their logged-in status as well as their cart contents then I would say external sessions is the way to go, unless he wants to transfer all the pages into his shop, which is an option using article manager or some other "information" contrib.

 

Best,

Sheri

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You has asked about creating new php pages and applying Chemos code to them. I assumed you meant php page within the shop and that is what I was saying would just complicate things. If you are going to have pages outside of the shop, then there is nothing wrong with using that contribution and is, in fact, a good idea.

 

Jack

Support Links:

For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc.

Get the latest versions of my addons

Recommended SEO Addons

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi, I hope you don't mind my joining this thread. I'm not sure I understand completely. I too have several html pages and I do not loose my cart when going between the php and html pages. I have not used a contribution for external pages either. My question is, Does my cart still work because my html pages are in my root and not in a folder?

Log Cabin Fever Gifts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi, I hope you don't mind my joining this thread. I'm not sure I understand completely. I too have several html pages and I do not loose my cart when going between the php and html pages. I have not used a contribution for external pages either. My question is, Does my cart still work because my html pages are in my root and not in a folder?

 

Actually you do lose your sessions.

home page -> articles->then all your links are without sessions

 

and the same goes for your blog, archive and so many others.

and no your cart doesn't work if cookies are blocked and the customer does such a transition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually you do lose your sessions.

home page -> articles->then all your links are without sessions

 

and the same goes for your blog, archive and so many others.

and no your cart doesn't work if cookies are blocked and the customer does such a transition.

 

Wow, I really am confused. I tried it logged in and not logged in and my cart contents stayed with me. But it didn't function for you. Did you loose the cart contents as soon as you went to an html page or upon check out? I know I have "Force cookies" turned to false in Admin. Does this need changed to true?

 

I appreciate your assistance! Thanks

Log Cabin Fever Gifts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, I really am confused. I tried it logged in and not logged in and my cart contents stayed with me. But it didn't function for you. Did you loose the cart contents as soon as you went to an html page or upon check out? I know I have "Force cookies" turned to false in Admin. Does this need changed to true?

 

I appreciate your assistance! Thanks

did you block all cookies with your browser first? Do that, then add an item to the cart click your articles link for instance and then click the shopping cart and you will see it. Lots of the links at the bottom of your pages have this problem.

 

The solution is not to enforce cookies. Because in your case you simply cannot (being on a shared server). Not to mention you may have customers who block them.

 

You need to maintain sessions everywhere in and out of your catalog since you're using different folders.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

did you block all cookies with your browser first? Do that, then add an item to the cart click your articles link for instance and then click the shopping cart and you will see it. Lots of the links at the bottom of your pages have this problem.

 

The solution is not to enforce cookies. Because in your case you simply cannot (being on a shared server). Not to mention you may have customers who block them.

 

You need to maintain sessions everywhere in and out of your catalog since you're using different folders.

 

No, I didn't have all cookies blocked just third party, which evidently the cart still functions at that setting. I do see what you mean when I block all cookies! I didn't know!!!!! Thank you for pointing this out. So, now I am back to I have to change all the html to php, correct every link that is not the tep_href_function. Is that correct?

Log Cabin Fever Gifts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yes pretty much all pages have to follow sessions otherwise there is always the risk a customer may click one of these links in between a transaction and lose the cart.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yes pretty much all pages have to follow sessions otherwise there is always the risk a customer may click one of these links in between a transaction and lose the cart.

 

So Mark (and Jack if your checking in) what do you think is my best option for correcting my problem? A contribution for extra pages or rewrite everything? I have ALOT of links to correct. I started to try and rewrite in php but I am having a problem getting the links to work in the language files. Also, for the footer I have links to my categories. Will I have to make defines in the filenames.php for each category? This is looking like a really big repair job :-)

Log Cabin Fever Gifts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Just a quick thought here ...

 

If you have old pages that are already in google etc., it is important to keep the page names the same. We've done an integration of OS Commerce and HTML into one site at www.sutherlandsfurniture.com <-- the section of the gallery is OS Commerce, only for the purpose of allowing the business owner to add and edit his own items, and for the visitor to be able to browse items in a "gallery" of sorts. The previous site he had was all HTML. We tried to find a blend of both worlds and the client loves it.

 

So it's a much different way of structuring the site, but in this application worked nicely!

 

Gin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...