search engine safe URL's

[groggory]

Did they finally get it working?

Anyone have a spare store to try it out on?

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2796

[michael_s]

That is a totally different solution, but it looks like it works.

I think you could do it purely with .htaccess mod rewrite and no code modification at all, but that mod looks really easy to install. The author notes that it may still be a bit buggy though.

[vinces]

The one that is built into osCommerce is different, and works for some people, but not others. The one that you posted looks good, but you never know if its going to work until you try it out. The built-in one replaces all

?

with a

/

which will make it so that crawlers will have a better chance at look at it. It didn't work for me on one of my sites and had terrible results, see my old thread http://oscdox.com/index.php?name=PNp...ghlight=#12268
but I used it on inkyvinny.com, and it works like a charm So just play around and see what works.

[groggory]

On a sidenote...if I turn on search engine safe URL's, and assuming they work, will my old URL's be broken links?

[vinces]

It will automatically update your old links, but both will work, I just tested it on my store.

[lane]

I'll probably try this new contribution as I like it's URLs better, but the original OSC-Max mod for search engine friendly URLs does work.

Most likely the new contribution will have the same problem as the one in OSC-Max, and that is any code that does not correctly create URLs. For the most part we found that the core osC code works fine, but many contributions (including some in OSC-Max, PayPal IPN for instance) do not. Here is an example:

//Original Code (Merchant Partners Payment module contribution)
$declineurl = 'http://trans.atsbank.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_CHECKOUT_PAYMENT, '', 'SSL', true) . '?payment_error=' . $this->code . '&merchantpartners_cc_owner=' . urlencode($HTTP_POST_VARS['merchantpartners_cc_owner'];

The problem here is that the coder bypassed the link creation code for the parameters, and just "appended" them to the resulting link. This kinda works by default, but completely breaks for _any_ url modification scheme (ie, any search engine friendly URL contribution for instance).

here is my fix:

//IFD OSC_MODSQUAD.COM -- appending params at end is incorrect, leads to two ? in URL!
//Correct way is to pass in params to tep_href_link
$url_parms = 'payment_error=' . $this->code . '&merchantpartners_cc_owner=' . urlencode($HTTP_POST_VARS['merchantpartners_cc_owner']);

$declineurl = 'http://trans.atsbank.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_CHECKOUT_PAYMENT, $url_parms, 'SSL', true);

Hope this helps someone

[apexdog]

The Ultimate SEO URL contribution http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2823 is installed & running here: http://www.apexdog.com

It's an easy install & it works great.