Great oscommerce modifications. OSCommerce is capable of more than I ever thought possible.

[rs2k]

Please have a look at http://www.kwdventures.com/floor-mats-automotive.php and http://www.kwdventures.com/general-products.php. Those are a list of stores that all work as one. This oscommerce installation is about 4 months in the making and has been extremely modified. All stores proudly display Powered by osCommerce. These mods started with our first new store design at http://www.floormatsnmore.com and exploded into this within about 4 months.

 

I would like some feedback on some of the new features we just implemented as well as some of the new feature we plan on using in the very near future. Our goal is increasing the ease of online buying by offering easier choices with web 2.0 technology while at the same time providing relevant content with some soon-to-come modules. While each store has the capability to use a different CSS style sheet and logo set we have chosen to keep all of our automotive stores looking the same to provide company recognition. We will probably make the general merchandise stores look the same in the near future as well.

 

Product URLs:

This url is using a base20 product_id mod and some other mods to Ultimate SEO URLS:

http://www.hondacivicfloormats.com/2009-ho...p-4a334174.html

The goal was to put all of the $_GETs and $_POSTs in one place (Application_top.php) to limit the chance of injection attacks. Doing this also allowed us to change the way the product_id and cPath numbers look. Is some of our stores changed the base 10 IDs to base 20 IDs to lower the character count and to make it look a bit more random.

 

Category URLs:

We also made the same change to the cPath as well as adding a mix of slashes and dashes:

http://www.hondaaccordfloormats.com/premiu...ory-c-1b5c.html

 

Dynamic products_info page:

These stores use multiple products_info.php pages depending on what kind of content and product is being displayed. This is a good example: http://www.hondacrvfloormats.com/2009-hond...p-4e35a9d0.html

A different product is loaded when you select an option as opposed to using attributes. 9 products are displayed on this page by way of two combo boxes. Below the combo boxes is a cross selling module. This module is designed to give customers the opportunity to view all the products available to them for their vehicle all in one easy spot. There will be an RSS feed available to notify customers of price changes, specials, and new products available for their vehicle shortly.

 

Front page car module:

This store has a good example of a new front page car selection module that uses AJAX to allow you to select the product for what ever car you wish. It also randomly chooses a different car (BMW in this case) to display every time the page is reloaded. The header and categories also has a similar feature built in that takes you to a filter page to select your product.

 

Relevant content module:

This module will be up shortly, but it's an automatic news aggregator that displays relevant content to what ever site it is running on. (i.e. http://www.toyotacorollafloormats.com/ would display news and other information about the Toyota Corolla or about car care.) This module also will give customers an option to subscribe to the RSS feed it creates.

 

Blog module:

This module will also be attached to every site as part of the relevant content module. It will allow people to post questions and comments and information that relates to the site they are on.

 

Forum module:

A lot more than a module, it would be a large expansion of the blog module and would be whole different project.

 

SQL query rebuilds:

Quite a few SQL query has been changed in this store design. Before the queries were redesigned the server load constantly hovered around 1.0 (4 CPU) with 4 stores and 8 clicks per minute. Now the server load rarely rises above 0.1 with much more traffic than before. The key to making OSCommerce faster is by splitting those monster queries into multiple smaller ones. The best method for us has been to use a small "pointer query" with the "where" information that searches highly indexed tables and a larger query that finds then uses the IN operator to get the bulk information. I have personally seen query times drop from 2 seconds to .02 seconds (for both queries) by using this method. The new products RSS feed is an example of this. The stores can still use some more performance enhancements. Average parse times are between 0.2 seconds for the automotive stores and about 0.5 for the general merchandise stores. The category box takes the longest time to load.

 

Dynamic category system.

http://www.qualityfloorliners.com/ makes use of a simple dynamic category system. While this store still uses the normal OSC category box it is a VERY slow because of its 42,014 categories. This is the only store that uses it's own database. A small example of the dynamic category system can be seen by using the filter box to the left. After a vehicle is selected it takes you to a filter page. http://www.qualityfloorliners.com/filter.p...a&year=2001 is a good example. When you click on a category the product listing for that category comes up. It is a simple matter to turn the combo boxes in into a category box but it is more of a problem to get rid of the cPath system. Our goal is to completely replace the cPath system with a dynamic and cache-able category system. While it is tempting to program it in AJAX, I don't think Ajax is the best thing to use for SEO. An alternative would be to make a hybrid AJAX / parameter category system.

 

Automatic Banning system:

This store system validates every input you give it. If it finds that the input it is giving is probably an attack it logs the attack and bans the IP from the server. This has occurred 165 times and so far not one has been a false positive. We are looking into using project honey pot to reduce robot attacks in the future.

 

 

These are just a few of the ideas we have written down. The ones I mentioned are either something that we are currently using or are getting ready to use in our stores. Any feedback or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[rs2k]

I forgot to mention that the products for about 5 of the stores have not yet been added. If you browse around and find some product or category issues then that's why.

[socom]

http : // socomtactical.net/pouches-slings-and-holsters-gun-bags-c-26_54.html might get you banned on google

[ricksteruk2005]

From a SEO point of view, your first url has lots of repeated words and keywords. Whilst i can see what you are trying to do it might work for 6 months or so but the search engines will soon find out and then watch your SERPS drop overnight. A well thought out and descriptive block of text which does not jam in key words or repeat the content is a much better way of working.

 

Once i found out how to get in to the store and browse the products there is some nice work in there.

[jlynskey]

what if i wanted to buy floor mats from two different cars? would i have to checkout from different shopping carts? sounds to me like a whole lot of added inconvenience. personally, i would rather buy things from one store than have to shop at many stores.

 

sorry, but i would rather go to a single car part and accessory store. <_<