X-Cart forums

[JeremyL]

The only free SEO Mod for X-Cart seems to have died (XC SEO). I have decided to take the GPL code contributed by it's author and run with it.

The first goal will be to debug and turn the current code into a production release. I will then use that base code to turn this into a full service SEO mod dealing with both URLs and on page content. All of this while making it easy to cinfigure in the backend.

What I need first is to create a roadmap for this plugin and I need your input on the mod in it's current state and what you would like to see.

Please test this current code base and tell me what bugs you can find and how you think it can be improved. I will then begin the work on a production release.

Known Bugs (so far)

• Some CSS image links have broken urls like this one "/xcart/skin1/images/top_b.gif)/xcart//xcart/". (anyone see other urls like this one?)
• Printable page link does not work
• Are there still SSL link issues? I don't have SSL installed to test.
• What pages are not being rewritten properly? I think most all pages not dealing with the catalog should not be getting rewritten. Cart.php does not need to get indexed and so on. Please list what you consider needing static pages and which pages should be left out.

Current Features

• Creates html links for higher search engine rankings and increased traffic
• Replaces your PHP links with .html links
• Updates automatically and removes the need for manually generating a catalog
• Uses folders instead of .html files for category names
• Adds additional keywords to your product and category urls through use of a sub-folder for increased keyword density.
• Creates one link per product to prevent penalization from search engines for duplicate content.
• Auto-creates your product and category urls on installation - In X-CART-SEO, this is handled automatically

To Do

• Need default robots.txt file
• Please let me know what you want
• Static Catalog pages should 301 redirect to SEF Mod pages

Note that I am testing on Version 4.1.3. I could use a test bed for 4.0x versions.

You can download it here:
http://code.google.com/p/x-cart-seo/

You can also post and / or see what bugs we are working on here:
http://code.google.com/p/x-cart-seo/issues/list

I'll still respond to bugs in this thread in case people don't have a gmail account.

Install docs can be found here:
http://x-cart-seo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/x-cart-seo%20docs/

[Kjellstroem]

Thanks for putting in the time to work on a free seo mod. Is there any special process to install the plugin?

[JeremyL]

See addition to the first post for install instructions.

I have already made some improvements in the code to fix some bugs.

• There is no longer a query string after the .html extension
• Product images now work if you are using the database to store them
• The search is now sortable

[intel352]

hey jeremy, glad to see someone has taken this over. i've been so focused on other projects in the company that i haven't been able to devote any time to that (plus the server that my personal sites were hosted on, got hacked, been having to rebuild...)

we've got SSL certs, so I'll test out your changes sometime soon. i think one major issue (if i remember correctly) was /~username type of websites (for shared SSL certs) didn't seem to work right (but again, it's been what, 4 or 5 months? so i could be wrong)

cheers

[intel352]

oh, btw, i'm surprised the install instructions are working for you, on v4.1. That was another issue, where v4.1 has changed enough that the install instructions had to be changed regarding where a couple of the code inserts should be placed. i'll test today to verify that is still the case

[JeremyL]

Good to see you still around. Being how long it had been since and update and the fact the site was down, I thought maybe you had changed jobs and didn't have a need for x-cart any more.

On the install instructions, they actually are not correct as far as where to put the new code. All the code pieces you mentioned looking for have changed so I just put the new code where I figured it would work and it did. I just haven't gotten to rewriting them for 4.1.x. Soon I will try and create an install doc for both versions and put them in the release files.

I'm going out of town until Thurs. later on today, but will start working some more on this when I get back.

[intel352]

the outputfilter file replaces the php urls with the html counterparts, at the Smarty level.

i dunno if you've seen how other SEO mods work for x-cart, but DSEFU for instance, had edits for every template that referenced .php urls, which was a huge amount of work. I wanted to replace everything everywhere fairly easily, so the outputfilter parses the smarty templates before the content gets sent to the browser

the reference to "lofi" is where I attempt to cleanup for SE's, but that mode is optional, and only a part of the outputfilter.

[intel352]

just a note, in the outputfilter, the array: '$remove_tags' should probably be named '$exclude_tags' or something similar. those are tags that *shouldn't* be removed by func_strip_tags, if i remember correctly.

[JeremyL]

Sorry, I have not had a chance to see how the others work. Didn't want to spend the $$$ when this one could just be finished.

I was getting confused because in the other thread you and another guy started talking about how the system didnt recognize something as a bot. It was really late last night so I don't remember exactly.

I'm still trying to get my head around all the regex. Times like this is when I wish I had a VS.NET system for php so I could step through the code line by line and see the contents of the vars.

[intel352]

Ha, something like that would be nice
Maybe try something like Zend Studio 5 with the debugger enabled (never used the debugger, but supposed to show alot of info)

Additionally, a project for this mod has now been created at Google:
http://code.google.com/p/x-cart-seo/

Create a user account with google if you don't already have one, I'll add you to the team.