strange product urls

[basnyd]

Hi -

Why do my product urls look like this?

catalog/product_info.php?pName=afghanistan-4-x-6-outdoor-flag&cName=outdoor-flags-4-x-6-flags

I see a pName and cName variables.

Thanks,
Barb

[JohnW]

Hi Barb,

Are you still having a problem with this? What settings do you have on your SEO URL page in Admin? The Ultimate SEO URL mod can produce a great URL with a little updating and tweaking and you can filter short words too so you can eliminate the 4-x-6 or even change it. URLs like my following have worked pretty well for me.

www.driedflowersrus.com/birch-branches-natural-bunches-p-337.html

[michael_s]

Barb, this is because of the SEO Urls settings in your admin. You have it set to use the Pname/Cname scheme instead of the .htaccess scheme.

[basnyd]

Ok, I'm finally getting back to this. My SEO settings are as follows:

Enable SEO URLs? true
Choose URL type: cName
Filter Short Words: 4
Reset SEO URLs cache: false

I tried reseting the cache, but it didn't change anything. Any advice?

Thanks,
Barb

[JohnW]

Try

Choose URL type: Rewrite

and reset your cache again

[basnyd]

Thanks that helps there. But, now the alpha navigation within a category doesn't work because it was pointing to the cname url. See below:

<a href=index.php?cName=<?php echo $cName?>&alpha=a>A</a>

The code is here ---

Alphabetical links within categories/sub-categories

[JohnW]

I wish I could be more help to you on this but you might want to look through the ultimate SEO contribution because the Cname option is removed on later versions. I updated mine in August 07 and it proved worthwhile for some SE rankings as you gain more options with the upgrade.

[basnyd]

Based upon this note on the Ultimate SEO page:

#################################
NOTE: Versions 2.1d and later of this contribution contained works under the "Open Public License" which is not compatible with the GNU General Public License and therefor had to be removed. Please check that further additions to this contribution package are LEGAL and are released under the GNU General Public License.
#################################

Should I be using the August 29 2007 version of the contribution?

Thanks for your help.
Barb

[JohnW]

My interpretation is that was strictly a legal ease issue and not anything that was a real problem for users, but maybe Mike or one of the others can comment on it. Anyway, putting that issue aside you may or may not find a lot of benefit from some of the later updates or you may have some issues with later updates, but I found updating to that point to be very useful and well worth it.

Honestly, I don't keep good notes on things like this and I see that as a flaw after so much time in having my site up. But, if you read through the changes from the version that you have you should get a good feel as to whether you'll find it worth it, but it was a pretty easy upgrade.