need advice from the pros

[bkpie]

Site is almost done however I have a couple questions. Since we are wholesale we sell alot by weight which means the price can change from the approximate price shown on site when they order. Hence we have to collect Credit Card info and do offline processing once we get final order price and keep it safe.

1) I have found this contribution which has encrypting,cvv etc. (very hard to get to work w/oscmax osCommerce: CCCVV_ISSUE_START Selectable with card blacklist Does anyone know if this is a good one or of another mod that will work better?

2) I have been told 3 different things by 2 different people. One says Oscmax RC3 is very search engine friendly while another says it is not and I need to add the contribution Header Tags???? Also to use Joomla to make a front page. Anyone with experience with the above or a reccomendation??

Feel free to state your opinion

Thank you very much.

Blayne

[michael_s]

1. I am not sure if it is still available, but there was an encryption addon for the standard CC module that would send an encrypted email with the order and card info that you would decrypt on your computer. It was tricky to set up as well, but not the modding of osCMax, actually getting GPG encryption to work...

2. SEO = Everyone has their own opinion, including me. First, meta tags are all but useless now. They are obsolete technology for when search engines were so primitive they needed special tags to figure out what was on your site.

The multi-billion dollar google engine is pretty smart these days, and uses the actual content of your pages for indexing and pretty much ignores meta tags, since they are so easily abused. The dynamic meta tag feature of osCMax is more than capable of creating unique meta tags for your pages if you persist in your delusion that meta tags actually matter anymore (They don't).

The title tag your html H1 H2 and H3 tags are more important for keyword density, which are all controlled by how you template your site and actual page content. That is how you get better SERPS.

[bkpie]

Michael

I found that contribution you spoke of. I noticed that with the current credit card module that you can have the middle of the CC # mailed to you. Wouldn't that be considered secure since it won't be completely stored in DB? Then I would need to find a simple cvv code that would have the ability to remove that from the database as well>

Blayne

[michael_s]

No that is not secure and is not considered secure.

You should never consider anything stored or sent in clear text as secure, even if it is partial digits. It is scary how easy it is to get the missing digits... Remember if your DB is compromised, so is the rest of your server, so any outbound emails in cleartext are all too easy to snag.

Any fraudsters will easily be able to grab the outbound email and match it to the correct customer in your db.

If you are using a shared server, it is even easier.

CVV should never be stored, and I believe that it is against every cards terms of use, so don't do it unless you are willing to risk your ability to process visa, mc and amex.

[bkpie]

Michael

The ccgpg contribution I found really has not instructions whatsoever. You wouldn't happen to be able to dig into your memory of where the full contribution is.

[michael_s]

It is pretty simple really. Install the module by uploading the ccgpg.php file to your modules/payment directory.

Then modify the file per your path details. The code below is a section of the ccgpg.php file that you need to modify. Just change the paths to the ones on your server and the email and key to yours. You also have to have gpg installed and working on your server. (google gpg if you don't know what it is).

PHP Code:

if ( (defined('MODULE_PAYMENT_CCGPG_ENCRYPT')) && (MODULE_PAYMENT_CCGPG_ENCRYPT == 'GPG') ) {
            $message = 'Order #' . $insert_id . "\n\n" . 'Number: ' . $this->cc_complete . "\n\n";
            $tmpToken = md5(uniqid(rand()));
            $plainTxt = "/path/to/tmpdir" . "$tmpToken" . "anca";
            $crypted = "/path/to/tmpdir/" . "$tmpToken" . "anca.asc";
            $gpghome="/path/to/gpg-pubring/";  //where is your pubring? That dir has to have write access.
            $gpgpath="gpg";   //where is the executable
            $gpgrecipient="Your Name (emailkey) <you@your-email.com>"; //the key used for encryption
            $fp = fopen($plainTxt, "w+");
            fputs($fp, $message);
            fclose($fp);
            system("export HOME=" . $gpghome . " ;" . $gpgpath . " --batch --always-trust --quiet --no-secmem-warning --compress-algo 1 -ear '" . $gpgrecipient . "' $plainTxt");
            $fd = fopen($crypted, "r");
            $message = fread($fd, filesize($crypted));
            fclose($fd);
            unlink($plainTxt);
            unlink($crypted); 
        tep_mail('', SEND_EXTRA_ORDER_EMAILS_TO, 'Extra Order Info', $message, STORE_OWNER, STORE_OWNER_EMAIL_ADDRESS, '');       
        //tep_mail('', MODULE_PAYMENT_CC_EMAIL, 'Extra Order Info: #' . $insert_id, $message, STORE_OWNER, STORE_OWNER_EMAIL_ADDRESS);
      }
    } 


[MindTwist]

Originally Posted by michael_s

2. SEO = Everyone has their own opinion, including me. First, meta tags are all but useless now. They are obsolete technology for when search engines were so primitive they needed special tags to figure out what was on your site.

The multi-billion dollar google engine is pretty smart these days, and uses the actual content of your pages for indexing and pretty much ignores meta tags, since they are so easily abused. The dynamic meta tag feature of osCMax is more than capable of creating unique meta tags for your pages if you persist in your delusion that meta tags actually matter anymore (They don't).

The title tag your html H1 H2 and H3 tags are more important for keyword density, which are all controlled by how you template your site and actual page content. That is how you get better SERPS.

Hi michael_s,

Bringing up this thread, since I was just trying to install HeaderTags_V_2.6.3 on my OSCMAX (and failed on the first attempt).

I actually wasn't too worried about search engines when I started building up my store, but now that I am almost done and have noticed that several people have found me via google, I decided to do my best to try and get good ranking on google.

So I wanted to try to install header tags controller, since I thought that would be a way to improve my chances on being found. I have seen that my pages have meta tags based on my store categories, so I thought that with HTC I could better personalize the meta tags on the product pages with the keywords that can help people fine me better.

Do you think I am wasting my time with that approach? Any hints you can give me on how to improve my OSCMAX install serach engine-wise, some tutorial I could check out, etc...?

Thx!

[met00]

Header tags are the *LOWEST* priority in determining the value of the pages.

The key to position is non-changing content that is highly linked and highly applicable. Key words and phrases in context and links from similar sites to yours will move you up in the engines.

My suggestion. Create secondary content only sites that deal with your field (ie: what the store sells) and then provide links to the store from content filled pages.

For instance, say my store sells cameras and is called camerastore.com. I would then create a few domains called cameraguy.com, cameracity.com, cameraman.com, shootit.com, etc. and I would load these pages up with content that was informational to the purchase of cameras (think of each page as a FAQ answer). I would then make sure that each page has links to items in the store and of course a link to the store under things like "best camera equipment" Then I would go out and promote the pages of general information on forums and message boards.

Now this seems like a lot of work, but what it ill do is create a high level of content links in to the store from a number of other locations (I would also recommend using a number of different hosts for the pointer stores as google penalizes the value of the links if they all come from the same IPs).

Now the above is not as easy to do as slapping a solution on to your store that will "do SEO for you", but the reality is that there are thousands of people looking at ways to beat other people at the game of stuffing google, so google has maintained the value of content relevant links in as one of the highest markers of value to the quality of the link. So any efforts made to increase the value of the quantity and quality of inbound links is 100% more effective than any tweaking solution you can do to the store itself.

That isn't to say that tweaking can't help. It can. In fact we found that just one tweak we made was able to increase position in a visible way when we added it to our version of Max. But real positioning can be best enhanced by looking at creating these content laden sites as marketing costs and investing in the quality inbound links.

Now a quick secret on how to lower the costs of doing this...

look for sites like:
5GBFree - Quality free website hosting

and set up one or two of these feeders at each one of these sites. Since no site will be more than 5GB in content or bandwidth your primary costs will be in the expense of the domain names. And there you have low cost provides like easytoregister.net that charge less than $10/yr for every domain name you have.

So, let's say you want to do this and you get 30 pointer domains and create these minimal informational pointed sites on free hosts, the total cost is $300 and the time you spent building the sites. Then you spend 5 hours a week working the forums and posting links to your feeder sites. At that rate you should see some upward movement in your position in google within 60-90 days.

[disclaimers:
1) I have used the free 5gb sites, but I do not make any money off telling anyone else to use them
2) I do use easytoregister.net for my domain names, but do not make any money off telling anyone else to use them
3) BIA Solutions version of oscmax has a number of seo enhancements in it, it is one of the selling features of the software, so we do acknowledge that there are many things you can do that will enhance the software itself, that said, we also highly recommend to every client that they do the above as it is the very best bang for the buck when it comes to google ranking. Better than any tweaks that I do to the software side of the store.
4) YMMV
end disclaimers]

[MindTwist]

Hi met00,

Thank you very much for your long explanation, very appreciated. Guess I will forget then about the header tags contribution if they are not so important anymore today, I will stick to meta_tags.php on OSCMAX and try to improve it as much as possible, and later find other ways to promote my website.

Yup, have seen many times those web sites with just links. I don't usually like them (at least the typical that si on expired domains, mysstyped domains, and so on), but if it is a way do it, I might as well check it out.

Guess next time I update my descriptions I will also make sure that if I sell a camera, I will have to make it clear on the description that it is a camera, a good camera indeed, obviously a great camera. People should know it is a camera. Have I already said how good the cameras we sell are?

One of the little things I did know is that seting up 100s of domains on the same IP and having them link each other won't help much. If you do have any of those pointer domains I could check out to get the idea could you PM them to me please?

Thanks!

[met00]

Originally Posted by MindTwist

Yup, have seen many times those web sites with just links. I don't usually like them (at least the typical that si on expired domains, mysstyped domains, and so on), but if it is a way do it, I might as well check it out.

Whoa! That is not what I'm talking about.

1) get a free website at the URL above.
2) create 5 pages of CONTENT related to your site
3) within the content create links to products, etc.

here is an example of content for my camera site... from "shooting a portrait"

What if you don't have a big open space with diffuse light and a neutral background? Steal one. If you live in the United States, a vast open space with light pouring in from expensive skylights is as close as your nearest art museum or university. With a 200mm lens like the <a href=linktomystoreslens/>Kanen Pick Me</a> set to f/2.8, the background will be thrown out of focus. Here are some examples from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a couple of lobbies at MIT, taken on a cold February day in Boston. <a href=linktoproduct/>Canon EOS-5D</a>, 70-200/2.8 IS lens, handheld without flash.

Create pages of content, and links to products in that content.

Linklists don't work!