OpenCart Community

Ok, now I know there is a lot of talk and posts speculating SEO. However as a newb to it all. Could someone explain exactly step by step how I get it to work.

My understanding of it is to enable SEO in admin backend of OC (using 140 currently) but I believe I have to change some other settings for example apache modrewrite. Can anyone elaborate, maybe a dummies quite to setting this service up.

So far when I have tried to enable the OC setting it won't even load the homepage of my site.

Thanks once again in advance
Stewart

you do have to have mod rewrite enabled, but it's a very difficult task that is virtually impossible to write a "for dummies" list for. If you are on a real web host this will already be setup correctly 99.9% of the time on linux hosting. If you are using a local server like xampp you'll need to go to their site to figure out how to enable mod_rewrite.

I believe the big step you missed is renaming .htaccess.txt to .htaccess and if need be changing rewritebase / to rewritebase /storefoler/ if you have it installed in a sub directory.

Thanks for your reply. In my root directory there is a file already named .htaccess the contents is as follows

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^brockhamangling.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.brockhamangling.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.thefishingandleisureshop\.com" [R=301,L]

However when i switch on the Use SEO URL's function on OC Backend then click on my site it does this

http://www.thefishingandleisureshop.com/Leisure%20Shop - URL

Not Found

The requested URL /Leisure Shop was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.thefishingandleisureshop.com Port 80

shoo002 wrote:Thanks for your reply. In my root directory there is a file already named .htaccess the contents is as follows

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^brockhamangling.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.brockhamangling.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.thefishingandleisureshop\.com" [R=301,L]

However when i switch on the Use SEO URL's function on OC Backend then click on my site it does this

http://www.thefishingandleisureshop.com/Leisure%20Shop - URL

Not Found

The requested URL /Leisure Shop was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at http://www.thefishingandleisureshop.com Port 80

well I'm guessing if you have the store installed in the root this .htaccess must be left over from some old install of something. You should rename it to .htaccess.bak or something (just incase you need it for some strange reason) and then rename .htaccess.txt to .htaccess

Thanks again for your help,

I have done the first step of renaming the .htaccess file in the root to .htaccess.bak (shop still seems to work)

The second step was to rename the htaccess.txt, the problem is I dont have that file in my root at all therefor i cant rename it. I am using filezilla and showing all hidden file but cant find htaccess.txt.

I am using Mac. Mac OSX by default hides any files starting with .

I downloaded OC140 Again to see if i have a htaccess.txt file but cant find one.

Any ideas
Thanks again
Stewart

It has definitely included a file called .htaccess.txt (see rootfolder)

did you have show hidden files on when you uploaded? you may have inadvertently missed it at that point and that could be why you can't see it on the ftp now.

I have managed to get it working with all of your help in this post. The urls are coming out like this

http://www.thefishingandleisureshop.com/Leisure%20Shop

is the %20 normal or can i get rid of it somehow.

Thanks
Stewart.

The %20 means you have a space in your SEO url for that product/category. Standard SEO practice is to use all lowercase letters with hyphens instead of spaces. So your url would look like this:

http://www.thefishingandleisureshop.com/leisure-shop

Thanks John,

Ive got it working properly now.

Thanks
Stewart

I am having troubles with the SEO portion. I have been working to set up the cart (ver 1.4.4) and left the SEO til last.

I found a site that explained how to check if your server had Apache Mod_rewrite installed. I am using webmasters.com and it says that it is in deed working.

I renamed the .htaccess.txt to .htaccess in the carts home folder
I turned on SEO in the settings.

But when I check the website, it brings up what I would expect as the correct address - ie www.website.com/cartfolder/"seo name of category"

But the contents of the page, is that of the main home page of my regular site that I have built in Etomite. But its just the text, no background, formating, layot or anything, just text and links.

So obviously in its process of rewriting things... something is a miss. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Wade

If you have OpenCart is a subdirectory you need to add it to RewriteBase.

You mean edit the .htaccess file And change it to? I hope Im on the right track here, new to all the code stuff - so feeling my way around and when you dont know what to search for... it makes it tougher But Im trying

Thanks
Wade

You got it.

aaaaaahhHHHHHHaaaaaaaa....
Got it, makes sense - Thanks so much!
Its all working great.

Wade

Wade C wrote:

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)\?*$ index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA]

And change it to?

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /cartfolder/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)\?*$ index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA]

Thanks for this info.
Maybe a good thing to put this info in the manual!

Hi guys,

I'm running v1.4.4 and am having issues with enabling seo urls (hangs head in shame)

I have renamed .htaccess.
My store is in the root directory.
I have enabled seo urls in the admin pages.
I have added a keyword to my "about us" page, however when I go to the website and click the about us page I get the following error I'm not an expert, but have found my way around installing modules and have sightly hacked around in the code to cope with format and layout changes, I don't believe that i've damaged the coding in anyway though,
Could someone give me a guide as to where to go next (politely please )

bump

are you sure your host has mod_rewrite enabled and working?

I've been on to them a couple of time to confirm as I couldn't even get a simple statis html redirect to work,

THEN I've randomly found out a website that explains.
I've commented out the following line as it seems to interfere with my version of apache.
# Options +FollowSymlinks

(also made a rookie error by calling the file .HTACCESS. rather than .HTACCESS (no dot))

all looks wonderful now.

For anyone else with a problem, I fully recommend this page: http://www.webune.com/forums/how-to-tes ... d-t40.html