Why have the product links changed in V4?

[disco_ii_disco]

Hi,

Just upgraded to V4.

Instead of

http://www.caravanaccessoryshop.co.uk/inde...p;productId=268

product links are now:

http://www.caravanaccessoryshop.co.uk/inde...p;productId=268

This means that all the links I have to products from other websites are now incorrect and the search engines will be pointing to incorrect pages until they re-index them. I'm going to lose out on a lot of business over the weekend because of this.

Is there anyway of getting the links back to how they were?

Cheers,

Chris

[Guest Brivtech]

Why have the product links changed in V4?

Because the new software does things different with better code, etc. Clearly, you won't appreciate this right at this moment.

This means that all the links I have to products from other websites are now incorrect and the search engines will be pointing to incorrect pages until they re-index them. I'm going to lose out on a lot of business over the weekend because of this.

Is there anyway of getting the links back to how they were?

Firstly, if you want to improve your search engine prominence, you should consider using the SEO function, which will again change the URLs.

As far as changing them back goes... no. It's wired into the code, and would take considerable programming to change everything.

My advice would be to get the SEO set up as quickly as possible, and change the 404 behaviour of your web server, so it points back to the index page whenever a missing page is found, rather than producing an error and stopping. The search engines will re-index the new system pretty quickly.

[disco_ii_disco]

Thanks for the fast reply.

Still think it was a bit of an unnecessary change though.

I did put the SEO links on for a start but then realised that if I ever move a product to a different category or re-structure the categories I will be facing the same problem.

I've always appeared at the top of Google for my most popular products so hope I've not messed things up by upgrading.

Incorrect links are being re-directed to the home page so I don't suppose that is a complete disaster.

Cheers,

Chris

[Guest EverythingWeb]

This will sort you out:

http://www.cubecartforums.org/index.php?s=...ost&p=20061

(I'm linking directly, which would not normally be allowed, as it's a post by Devellion's Al)

[Guest Brivtech]

Great link - Additional note: When applying version updates, be careful you don't overwrite these files, if you need to, you'll need to re-apply the modification.

[disco_ii_disco]

Brilliant - just what I needed!

Time to tackle my next issue now - the sitemap.

Cheers,

Chris

[Guest Brivtech]

I wrote a sitemap generator (hacked from an existing CC file), which I'll be talking to Al about soon to see if he'll integrate it into CC.

I'm still trying to figure out how to turn a php script into a cron job, so that it can run daily to update without any user-intervention.

[disco_ii_disco]

I wrote a sitemap generator (hacked from an existing CC file), which I'll be talking to Al about soon to see if he'll integrate it into CC.

I'm still trying to figure out how to turn a php script into a cron job, so that it can run daily to update without any user-intervention.

I built a very simple sitemap for v3 that worked well:

<?php

/*

This is a sitemap mod written by Chris Ashwell 2008

*/

include_once("includes/ini.inc.php");

// INCLUDE CORE VARIABLES & FUNCTIONS

include_once("includes/global.inc.php");

// initiate db class

include_once("classes/db.inc.php");

$db = new db();

// query database

$query = "SELECT productId, productCode, quantity, name, description, image, noImages, price, popularity, sale_price, stock_level, useStockLevel, digital, digitalDir, prodWeight, cat_name, ".$glob['dbprefix']."CubeCart_inventory.cat_id, cat_father_id, cat_image, per_ship, item_ship, item_int_ship, per_int_ship, noProducts FROM ".$glob['dbprefix']."CubeCart_inventory INNER JOIN ".$glob['dbprefix']."CubeCart_category ON ".$glob['dbprefix']."CubeCart_inventory.cat_id = ".$glob['dbprefix']."CubeCart_category.cat_id ORDER BY cat_name, name ASC;";

$result=mysql_query($query);

$meta['siteTitle'] = "Caravan and Camping equipment at The Caravan Accessory Shop";

$meta['metaDescription'] = "Sitemap";

print "<html><head><title>Caravan and Camping equipment at The Caravan Accessory Shop</title><link href='skins/Chris Killer/styleSheets/style.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /></head><body><h1>Caravan and Camping Equipment</h1><h2>Caravan Accessory Shop Sitemap</h2><ul>";

$header ="";

while ($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)){

extract($row);

if ($header==$cat_name){

echo "<li><a href='index.php?act=viewProd&productId=$productId'>$name</a></li>";

$header=$cat_name;

}

else

{

echo "<h2>$cat_name</h2>";

echo "<li><a href='index.php?act=viewProd&productId=$productId'>$name</a></li>";

$header=$cat_name;

}

}

print "</ul><p><a href='index.php'>&lt;&lt; Back to Home</a></body></html>";

?>

If anyone could help me adapt it for V4 that would be great.