OsCommerce & ISAPI Rewrite

[Guest]

Hi Everyone,

 

I know SEO URL's has been covered before in the past, and on a linux machine Ultimate SEO URL's is Perfect for the job, However if you are running a windows machine previously there has been no solution to getting Search Engine Friendly URL's apart from Third Party software that you are required to pay for. :-"

 

i am currently working on a heavily modified OsCommerce site, it is hosted on a IIS6 Windows Machine with MYSQL 4.1.1.14NT Via TCP/IP (this is all pretty much standard anyway... :blink: )

 

because the SEO URL's on a windows machine can only use (cname's) and (cpath's) (according to the Ultimate SEO URL's Contrib) i decided to go another way, Using some ISAPI Modules and some custom coding i have been able to get our URLS to come out in the following format's,

 

I changed the products URLS from

http://www.website.com.au/catalog/product_...8d1c29ae3cdd82b

 

to:

http://www.website.com.au/catalog/283.htm&...8d1c29ae3cdd82b

or http://www.website.com.au/catalog/283.htm

....com.au/catalog/everythinghereisignored-c-productsid_goes_here.htm

everything on the left of the c is ignored, on the right hand side of the c goes the product id.

 

i am able to turn the categories into whatever they are called aswell, for instance.

I have a category named Computers, i can use Rewrite rules (1 simple line of code) to change the URL to,

http://www.website.com.au/catalog/Computers/283.htm or even,

http://www.website.com.au/catalog/Computers-c-283.htm

/Computers/ being the name i can to that category and 283.htm being the product ID.

 

Any person who is serious about Search Engine Optimization will have to agree this is a perfect format for URL's to be written, there are no Question marks and to the unsuspecting eye aswell as Spiders it looks like an ordinary static HTML File! Meaning Search Engines will spider and link your site better than with standard URL's.

 

I can get all the links to work without problems if i type them in manually, however i do not know what i should change in the OSC Instance so that every link on the Categories side, breadcrumbs and so forth are put into the correct format and are sent to www.website.com.au/catalog/2323.htm instead of the usual product_info.php?= pages.

 

Basically what i am trying to do is find some way to modify the OSC code to enable me to change the URL's to the updated status, so when someone is using our navigation instead of "http://www.website.com.au/catalog/283.htm&cPath=27_32_33&osCsid=1efdf5bc6f6bcfa288d1c29ae3cdd82b" the new URL's are linked to all of the products in the Categories.php or dm_categories.php depending on what navigation menu you use for OSC.

 

Once this entire thing is working on my site i am going to compile some help documents and some installation files so that everyone can share in the benifits of Windows Based SEO URL's with a twist, i have already written a Installation file that will do everything for you (Once i have nail down some way to change the url's easily i will add an administration module so we can have some control over how URL's are handled. :thumbsup:

 

If anyone can help me as to where and what i have to change in OsCommerce i would very much appreciate any assistance given. :)

 

Hopefully this will grow into a Contribution that is distributed as standard with OSC, god knows how much websites need Search Engine Friendly URL's.

 

If anyone has any questions or suggestions please dont hesitate to post a reply,

Thanks Everyone, :thumbsup:

[Guest]

Probably a good place for you to start is to look at the changes Ultimate SEO Urls (or perhaps others - I only know of the former) makes to the function tep_href_link in general.php

 

This is the function that is called everytime a link is needed and can be modified to give url's like those you desire.

 

Good luck - sound v. useful mod to make.

Tom

[Guest]

I still have no bloody idea on how i should change the way links in the site are constructed....

 

Any chance someone can give me a hand?

 

Thanks