Can I change the main pages back to .html?

[Jged]

Hi,

 

Ever since I changed from using Paypal on my website Carbon Monoxide Detectors to OSCommerce I have struggled to get a grips with the website as I am not a .php programmer.

 

I personally want to be able to make regular changes to the site myself (from a SEO point of view) but I do not know or use .php and without regular input from me I feel that the site is going to lose ground in the search engines. I have told my programmer which pages I would like changing back to html (a total of about 10 pages). I need to get back some control of the website.

 

His reply to me was: ... I understand what you are saying but actually all the web pages are being driven from the database. A simple page like http://www.carbon-monoxide-detectors.co.uk/catalog/carbon_monoxide_poisoning.php is still driven from the database and is getting its contents from it. If we change this to HTML then it won’t pick things from the database. One thing that we can do for the SEO point of view is change the format from .PHP to .HTM on the run time. This would mean that the pages still remain PHP but would show as HTML on the URL. This will improve the SEO ratings.

 

Is he correct in what he is saying?

 

Any help appreciated,

Jged

[spooks]

Yes, but if you don't trust your programmer perhaps you should look for another!!

 

He could have also pointed out that if you go to a pure html page within your site you visitor could also loose their session, so cart, login etc

 

personnaly I have seen no benifit in having a html exension in place of php for seo.

[Xpajun]

I know what you are saying, some programmers never seem to understand that a hands on adaptation of your own website is sometimes essential especially when you need to present technical points.

 

The page you give as an example may be a .php file but it contains html script - if you look in your languages directory/folder you will find it open it and you will find: define('TEXT_INFORMATION', 'html script here' );

 

Providing you do not remove the beginning and the end (outside the italics and includes the ') and escape every ' in your html script in the following manner: \' as in it\'s, we\'re etc then you should be alright.

 

 

Again the item descriptions can be written in html...

 

Not sure which of your pages you want to alter yourself but I think I may have covered most of them?

[Jack_mcs]

His reply to me was: ... I understand what you are saying but actually all the web pages are being driven from the database. A simple page like http://www.carbon-monoxide-detectors.co.uk/catalog/carbon_monoxide_poisoning.php is still driven from the database and is getting its contents from it. If we change this to HTML then it won’t pick things from the database. One thing that we can do for the SEO point of view is change the format from .PHP to .HTM on the run time. This would mean that the pages still remain PHP but would show as HTML on the URL. This will improve the SEO ratings.

 

Is he correct in what he is saying?

No, he is not correct. The extension doesn't make any difference whatsoever. My guess is that your programer doesn't feel comfortable working with php and wants to convert the pages to something he understands better. That is not a good reason to do that.

[♥FWR Media]

Yes he is correct. The pages produced by osCommerce although output as html are in fact created via PHP and populated, in the main, from the database. Other files/text are populated by the text in the language define files.

 

Having an .html extension does not help seo but a meaningful seo uri with the product name in it can have seo benefits both for search engine and user.

 

I think your developer would have been more helpful to you by showing you how to change text/content in the admin back end .. this can be modified to use WYSIWYG which are as simple as typing in Wordpad.

[multimixer]

You can ask your programmer to install for you a WYSIWYG editor, or a contribution like "define content" or similar, so you can change the content of your static pages (the pages you want to revert to html) easily via your admin panel

[Jack_mcs]

Yes he is correct. The pages produced by osCommerce although output as html are in fact created via PHP and populated, in the main, from the database. Other files/text are populated by the text in the language define files.

 

Having an .html extension does not help seo but a meaningful seo uri with the product name in it can have seo benefits both for search engine and user.

No, he is incorrect. The programer stated that having an html extension instead of a php one will improve "ratings." That is simply not true. Rewriting the url has nothing to do with that statement since the url could be rewritten to use php instead. His statement, unless I misunderstood it, had nothing to do with the contents of the url. He just wants to convert it to .html because he believes that will make a differnce.

[Hotclutch]

Sounds like the programmer was merely suggesting installing a SEO URL module anyway.

[MrPhil]

Your programmer is correct when he says that the program is database-driven, and static HTML pages will be just that -- static. He is wrong when he says that converting to .htm will, by itself, improve search results. There are "SEO" add-ons for osC which dynamically show page URLs as .html, without the "URL Query String" stuff tacked on. While certainly neater looking, and easier to type in, these days they don't really do all that much for the major search engines.

 

You didn't say which pages you wanted to convert to static HTML. As mentioned before, if your customer wanders on to one of those pages, and then goes back to a regular .php page, he'll discover that his shopping cart is empty and his session has changed. Just what kind of information or text are you looking to regularly update? If you're unable to use a regular text editor to change the appropriate .php pages, your programmer might be able to rig up some kind of WYSIWYG editor for those pages. This is really getting into the domain of a full-fledged CMS, but it might be done. What the editor has to do, besides presenting text in a usable manner (rows that fit on a page and unescaping quotes), is allow WYSIWYG editing, glue the long text lines back together, and escape quotes before rewriting the .php files.

 

An alternative might be to pull out the text you want to maintain into a separate file, and have it dumped into the output stream as plain HTML (not within PHP echo statements). You would still have to manually insert any HTML markup, but at least you wouldn't have to worry about escaping quotes and such. You might even be able to use a WYSIWYG editor like DreamWeaver to edit it (just be careful that it doesn't add <html>, <body>, etc. tags).

 

Example: aboutus.php

  <td class="main"><?php echo TEXT_INFORMATION; ?></td>

         </tr>
  <!-- add HTML include file, hopefully easier to modify -->
  <tr><td class="main">
 <?php include("HTMLtext/aboutus.inc"); ?>
  </td></tr>
  <!-- end new stuff -->

       </table></td>

 

HTMLtext/aboutus.inc

<!-- The following code will be put directly into your 'About Us' page as HTML.
    If you want to start a new paragraph, put in <p> 
    Make all changes BELOW this line -->
<p>
Welcome to our site...we have over 900+ items to choose from...and we're always adding in new items each week
so please be sure to bookmark us and come back often.
<p>...

Something like that?

[ChrisBroadhurst]

OK if you really want to fine tune your seo considering on the site there are only 5 products I would convert the whole thing to html you would probably only need around 10 pages, then use OS Commerce as a back end order taker, I can never understand why people use a script such as OSCommerce for the whole site, I have always viewed it as a shopping cart not a CMS.

 

Also I notice the powered by link has been removed from the site, although this seems to be fine because you have fully customised your site front end a link back to OSCommerce somewhere wouldn't hurt would it? Especially seen as it hasn't cost you a bean and its fair to say you've had some good support from the forum????

 

Just my 2 penneth

[Jack_mcs]

OK if you really want to fine tune your seo considering on the site there are only 5 products I would convert the whole thing to html you would probably only need around 10 pages, then use OS Commerce as a back end order taker, I can never understand why people use a script such as OSCommerce for the whole site, I have always viewed it as a shopping cart not a CMS.

Besides being not necessary, that will break the shop due to the loss of session ID's. But even if that weren't the case, I don't understand why one would want to go the other way. Why create extra work for yourself when all of the code you need is in one package?

[Xpajun]

OK if you really want to fine tune your seo considering on the site there are only 5 products...

 

 

I used to only have 5 products on my site - I'm glad you weren't around when I started to advise me. You sound a lot like one or two bank managers I used to have - never had the ability to foresee future possibilities ;)

[ChrisBroadhurst]

Besides being not necessary, that will break the shop due to the loss of session ID's. But even if that weren't the case, I don't understand why one would want to go the other way. Why create extra work for yourself when all of the code you need is in one package?

 

 

I used to only have 5 products on my site - I'm glad you weren't around when I started to advise me. You sound a lot like one or two bank managers I used to have - never had the ability to foresee future possibilities ;)

 

WIth 5 products I hardly think session ID's mattaer really do you? 5 static html pages properly seo'd visible to search engines with a simple buy now button the re-directs you to the cart what is wrong with this? If anything it is much better seo wise? no? or are you gonna tell me now that OSCommerce is fine for SEO out of the box lmfao!!! Once people are within the cart as long as all the info is there for the different products they will surely find their own way around.

 

So far as bank managers they are a breed of their own!!!!!!! But thats the idea of business, why get you e-commerce ready for 20,000 products now when you only have 5 does that make sense to you? As your business grows so will your website no? Ever heard of projected growth?

 

Crikey the poster asked for opinions in future I wont bother posting mine!!!!

[Jack_mcs]

WIth 5 products I hardly think session ID's mattaer really do you?

Absolutely. If you don't, then you must not understand them. Losing the session ID means the customer gets logged out (if they were logged in) and the cart is emptied. If I were a customer and that happened to me I would be upset. If it happened twice, I would not use the site. How many customers are you willing to lose because you want to have html pages?

5 static html pages properly seo'd visible to search engines with a simple buy now button the re-directs you to the cart what is wrong with this?

 

Nothing is wrong with it. There are many, many sites that do that. But using oscomerce to do it just doesn't make any sense.

 

If anything it is much better seo wise? no?

Nonsense. No type of page is any better than any other type for SEO purposes.

 

or are you gonna tell me now that OSCommerce is fine for SEO out of the box lmfao!!!

Where did I even hint at this? No one that is familiar with oscommerce would even think to say that. But html sites aren't optimized initially either so I don't understand that this has to do with anything.

 

Once people are within the cart as long as all the info is there for the different products they will surely find their own way around.

Not if they lose the session ID.

 

Crikey the poster asked for opinions in future I wont bother posting mine!!!!

Why are your opinions not to be questioned?

[MrPhil]

Please everyone, enough arguing. If all you want to do is make it easy to change a chunk of text, without you having to pick your way through PHP code, do as I showed in my previous post and have your coder pull the HTML code out into a separate file that you can easily edit. That would be far easier than reimplementing your store in HTML, or trying mix PHP and HTML pages, or making any other major architectural changes.

[burt]

If the guy wants .html endings why not simple advise to use rewrite engine to change .php to .html. Am I missing something obvious?

[Jack_mcs]

Please everyone, enough arguing.

Not arguing, at least from my side. It's just a discussion.

[Jack_mcs]

If the guy wants .html endings why not simple advise to use rewrite engine to change .php to .html. Am I missing something obvious?

The op's programer told him it would be better for SEO reasons to have .html extensions instead of .php, which, as you know, is not correct.

[MrPhil]

If the guy wants .html endings why not simple advise to use rewrite engine to change .php to .html. Am I missing something obvious?

 

My understanding of the original request is that the OP wanted the store (or parts of it) turned into static .html files so that he could easily edit text. He didn't want to deal with .php code. As a byproduct of being .html files, the expectation was that SEO results would be improved.

[burt]

Ahhhhh - i missed that. The guys programmer is BS'ing.