Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Ever since 5.2.5, cleanURLs are working differently. Instead of this:

domain.com/category/subcategory/product.html

it is now:

domain.com/product.html?category_id=10



Why did this change? It is less aesthetically pleasing and less functional for the consumer. Is it a setting that can be changed back? Or let the cleanURL field contain forward slashes?

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

it looks clean url function is been disable or not working

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Well it is using the clean url I specify for the "product.html" part. It's just not including the category path; instead it adds "?category=" after the .html.

Clean urls are working for the category pages.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi,

yes right, clean URL is displaying category_id. It should not display it. Our store is URL is http://www.meditools.com.au/shop/sheep-tail-docking-banding-elastrator.html?category_id=97

How to fix it?

Regards,
Umar

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

This category parameter is used for proper navigation and its addition is intended. Could you please let me know why this part should not be there?

It will not cause the duplicated content problem, because canonical tag of the link
will point it to

Please, let me know.

Thank you.

Tony

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi Tony,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes it should point to http://www.meditools.com.au/shop/sheep-tail-docking-banding-elastrator.html

Kindly let me know how to do it.

Another question, I was trying to edit front page text "This demo online store..." but when I saved it a blank page appeared and when I refreshed the page it didn't changed. Although I have entered the registration key.

Please advice about this too.

Regards,
Umar

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Could you please let me know why is having links with category_id parameter is bad? It will help me to understand your position.


Did you try to go to Catalog > Front Page section in admin area and edit this text there?

Please, let me know.

Tony

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Tony, it is bad if any SEO guy thinks it is bad. And most will think it is bad. And that is enough. :-)

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi Tony,

--Front Page
Yes I'm trying edit FrontPage text from admin Catalog>Frontpage.

--Clean URLs
I'm using 4.1.10 with CDSEO on another site, it creates clean URLs (without any categoryid) then why 5.2.5 can't.

Here's what Google is saying about clean URLs

---------------------------------------------------------------
A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers). For example, if you're searching for information about aviation, a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation will help you decide whether to click that link. A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f 730f1, is much less appealing to users.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Does it fix the problem for you?


We have discussed the situation with the team and it will be reworked in the near future.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi Tony,

Thanks for understanding.

How about the frontpage issue? Its not resolved yet.

Regards,
Umar

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

@mohammadUMAR,

1) I just talked to the team and we come up with the following solution for SEO-friendly URLs:

We will remove category_id parameter from the URL if a product is assigned to a single category. If it is assigned to multiple categories, this parameter (category_id) will still be added in order to allow breadcrumbs and next/previous product links work properly.

2) As for Front Page, the text marked on my snapshot
https://i.imgur.com/eOhonn0.png

is defined in the Catalog > Front Page > Description section in X-Cart's admin area. So if you want to change it, you change it there.

If for some reason, such change does not affect your home page, this problem requires a thorough investigation and I would recommend you contacting our support team at support@x-cart.com.

Thank you.

Tony

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

I don't think this is the best approach. Perhaps instead there should be a primary category, and the additional categories.

For instance, we have a product that is primarily associated with a single category. However, it is also in a category for products approved for a certain geographical region. The primary category should create the cleanURL, but that product should be able to be accessed from additional categories.

It's very rare we have a product in only one category.

Before 5.2.5 it use to dynamically assign a URL based on whatever category it was accessed from. Not sure if this is best practice, but it was far more user-friendly.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

First of all, you can return prior-5.2.5 functionality if you go to etc/config.php file and define the use_canonical_urls_only option as Off, i.e.

Could you please let me know why is the approach of adding category_id parameter is bad for you? What is particularly bad in it?

Thank you.

Tony

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

mydomain.com/this-is-test-page.html

mydomain.com/this-is-test-page.html?category_id=4005

They are called user-friendly for a reason. First one is, second one is not. I can't really say how bad this second one SEO-wise but it looks ugly and not user-friendly at all. With the same success you can have it as

mydomain.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=34&category_id= 4005 - what's the difference right...

After all the goal of having html urls is to have html urls not html urls with dynamic parameters

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi Steve,

Frankly, there is a huge difference between URLs:

mydomain.com/this-is-test-page.html?category_id=4005
mydomain.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=34&category_id= 4005

First one is far more readable that other one. However, I agree that adding category_id makes it less pretty. On the other hand, if you want to assign a product to multiple categories, then it is logical that when you want to share a link to the product, it must be opened in a particular category not in default/random one, right?

I.e you have product Chianti and it belongs to categories Wines and Shop by country > Italy > Toscana. Then, a shopper can give this link to a friend with words "Hey I've found a decent wine" and this link will open the product in Wines category. Or shopper can share this link with words "Hey, they added Chianti to products from Toscana" and then the product must be opened in the Toscana sub-category.

Defaulting product to one of those categories will not solve the problem.

In this case, we have to somehow let X-Cart know that it must display this product in particular category. Previously, this info was passed in the structure of the URL:

But people complained about it, so we changed it to be:

And this seems to be not the best approach either. So, my question is how do you like to work then?

Thank you.

Tony

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Tony,
I appreciate the point you have here. How to cover all the bases, and it looks tricky.

From an SEO perspective, we know Google does not want duplicate content. The same content accessible from different URLs. Canonical tag helps but I am not sure that it is as powerful as removing alternate URLs.

Personally I would want one URL per product. As we know everyone will have a different opinion.

So, why don't we give them options. 3 options:
1. Always redirect to canonical URL. (In this case URL will be main category) This is a checkbox.

If this option is not checked, we present the other two options:
1. Use category based URLS for products. (i.e. Wines/Chianti and Italy/Toscana/Chianti)
2. Use dynamic categoryid in URL ( chianti.html?categoryid=12 )
This is a select box or radio.

I still maintain that the best structure for SEO is mydomain.com/Wines/Chianti.html, but I would not want the product to also be accessible from mydomain.com/Italy/Toscana/Chianti.html

So I would choose the first option I described above.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

I agree, I was just trying to emphasize the problem.

I am probably not the right person to tell you what is good/best for SEO, there are others well more professional in this to answer the question. From customer point of view I'd rather have

domain/cat/product.html

with canonical url to point to the main url on all variations. To me this follows the site structure.

Why don't you have it both ways and allow admin to select?

Another way would be to include the catid in the clean url instead as a parameter but again you may hear it is bed

domain/product-id.html

Or you can have all 3 as options and admin can select how to have it... Just a thought

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Steve, once again we are in complete agreement. Stop reading my mind man. :-)

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Thanks guys for your opinions!

From what I have heard so far, there are two common cases:
1) If each product belongs to one and only category, there should be a single link for a product and it must be the same as canonical one. X-Cart does not work this way, but it will be hotifxed in 5.2.6.

2) If a product can belong to multiple categories, the domain.com/category/subcategory/product.html URL structure is preferable. You can set up X-Cart this way already if you go to etc/config.php and define the option there as follows:

If I forgot about some case, please let me know so we can find out a solution for it.

Thank you.

Tony

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi There,

I have upgraded version X-Cart 5.1.1 to 5.2.5 and found that "cleanURL" field is lost in "xcart_products, xcart_categories" tables. How can I retain it?

Can anyone tell me, what was the problem?

Thanks!

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Also, when I am trying to enable the clean URLs in the admin. I am getting the below error:

"We made a test request to URL and got the following result.
It means that your SEO-friendly URLs may not work properly after enabling."

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

In X-Cart 5.2.5 all URLs go into a single database table (xcart_clean_urls), that's why cleanURL fields were removed from xcart_products and xcart_categories tables.


I believe there should be a link for more information about the problem (or the information is collapsed by default).

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi X-Cart team,

How can I remove default ".html" tag appended to the Clean URLs in X-Cart 5.2.6 version?

I need a Clean URLs of the below format:

URL: domain.com/product

Currently it is in the below format:

URL: domain.com/product.html

As my URLs already cached and with the search engines, I would like to have the same format as before without ".html" tag.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hello.
Unfortunately, X-Cart 5 does not support changing clean URL extension at this moment.
So you will need to create a module that would customize the clean URL functionality to get rid of the HTML extension.
But I'd like to say that we've been talking about adding this functionality to X-Cart core a while ago, so I'm going to ask the development team if this feature will be implemented in the future release.
I will keep you posted in this thread.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

We are currently in the process of upgrading from 5.1.11 to 5.2.x and this is preventing us from proceeding.

This is not an issue in 5.1.11. Why was this changed/removed?

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Hi,

Do we have any other alternate solution to remove the HTML extension from the clean URLs (like .haccess or any other changes) instead of creating a new custom module?

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

I was told by the development team that the ability to alter clean URL extensions is not yet planned to be implemented.
Please feel free to suggest this feature at our idea portal here:
* http://ideas.x-cart.com
The feature will be taken into consideration when it gets some votes.
I'm afraid simple redirect rules will not be able to solve your problem, because clean URLs of categories don't have an extension, but product pages do.
Please feel free to apply for a free custom development quote here
* www.x-cart.com/custom-development.html
You are welcome to discuss possible solutions with our project managers, I am sure they will be able to help you.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

As far as I know, X-Cart 5.1.11 did not have such feature our of the box.
Did you custom coded it?

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

No, we do not have custom code.
See attached screenshot of the field in the XCart Admin for products from 5.1.11 vs 5.2.25.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

I had the same problem when upgrading from 5.1.11 to 5.2.6 I made a real simple mod that should do what you are looking to do. Just go to modules and select upload add-on. Upload and install the attached mod. You will have to unzip the Clean_URL_Mod.zip. In that zip is the file Pmall-CleanURL-v5_2_6.tar That is the file to upload. I had to stick the .tar file in a zip because the forum allows zip files but not tars. Hopefully that isn't to confusing. Then you will need to go into the xc_clean_urls table and make sure that all urls have the .html removed. After that you should be ready to go. Let me know if any of that is unclear or if you have any problems.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

That is correct, you are free to specify the clean url for an item without any extension.
But it will be automatically appended to product urls after you save the changes.
See attached screenshots.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Thanks for sharing your mod!
But it doesn't seem to be working on X-Cart 5.2.6.
I installed and activated the module, but all product URLs still do have HTML extensions.
Also, extensions are in the database.
Are there any additional action required to make it work?
Thanks!

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

The mod won't remove the .html extension. You have to manually remove the .html from the xc_clean_urls. After you remove those extensions from the table. You should be able to redeploy the store, and they should be working. If the .html extensions are still in the table you will get a 404 error. The following sql command should do the trick:

UPDATE `xc_clean_urls` SET `cleanURL`=SUBSTRING(`cleanURL`,1,LENGTH(`cleanURL `) - 5) WHERE SUBSTRING(`cleanURL`,-5) = '.html'

I assume there is a way to run a sql command during installation of the mod, but I have to admit I'm unsure how to do it.

Let me know if this works for you, or if you still have problems.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

I will definitely try it tomorrow.
I'll keep you posted.
Thanks!

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Did this work for you?

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Sorry, I forgot to post an update.
Unfortunately, it didn't work. All pages throw the 'Page not found' error.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Did you remove all extensions from the database? If the extensions are there in the clean url table it throws the 404 error. I'm using it on my live 5.2.6 store and it works fine for me.

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I removed extenstions from the database.
Here is what my clean url table looks like

Re: Clean URLs in 5.2.5
 

Did you go under "look & feel" - "Performance" and clear the cache?