Ceon URI Mapping (SEO)

The Ceon URI Mapping module is a very handy module that no Zen Cart site should be without!

Unlike other SEO modules, where the URIs are generated automatically when a customer visits a page, this module allows you to generate the URIs automatically within the admin, or even to enter your own specific URIs for each product/category/EZ-Page/Zen Cart page.

We believe this to be a much better solution as you are in control of your URIs.

It's quick and easy to set up URIs for your products/categories/EZ-pages, and the module has a minimal impact on your server as it is very lightweight.

Improve your rankings in search engines and give potential customers easy to remember/enter URIs - check out the full feature list:




Use Static URIs to Make Web Addresses Easier To Remember and Easier To Enter. Improve your Rankings in Search Engines!


* Implementing a major part of all SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) practices, this module lets you specify static, keyword-based URIs to be used instead of dynamic, ID-based URIs.

For example - for a product - instead of dynamic URIs like this:

http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=5

A static address, full of keywords, could be specified for the product:

http://yourstore.com/books/life_is_good




[New for 3.0.0] Historical URI Mapping - No More Broken Links!


* Each Product/Category/EZ-Page/Zen Cart Page (subject) with URI mapping(s) has a single ??Current?? URI.

* Any number of URIs can map to the same subject. However, when a customer uses a URI which is not the ??current?? URI they are quickly and automatically redirected to the ??current?? URI. This occurs before the site begins to display, so is completely transparent.

* ??Deleted??/??Previous?? URI mappings still point towards their original subject, by redirecting the user to the ??Current?? URI for the subject (unless they have become overridden by a current or newer URI mapping which uses the same URI of course!).




Easy-to-use Admin Integration for Categories, Products and EZ-Pages


* Specifying custom URI mappings for Categories, Products and EZ-Pages is quick and easy.. just browse to the appropriate Category/Product/EZ-Page in the admin and enter the URI to be used in the text fields added by the module, or tick the ??auto-generate?? check box, if auto-generation is enabled!

* Change existing Product/Category/EZ-Page URI mappings in the same easy manner!




URI Mapping Auto-generation


* The module comes with very powerful, flexible and easy-to-use URI mapping auto-generation functionality.

* If auto-generation is used to create a URI mapping for a Product, Category or EZ-Page it automatically capitalises the Product/Category Name or EZ-Page title according to your preferred settings, replaces any whitespace with your preferred character, removes selected words and replaces particular characters/strings as specified in the configuration utility.




Full Multi-language Support - including Transliteration and UTF-8!


* The module is fully multilingual - every page can have a URI mapping for each language supported by the store!

* This means that the site will probably feature much higher in search engine listings specific to the various languages the store supports!

* The module also has full support for transliteration! When using the URI mapping auto-generation functionality it transliterates the names/titles from any language into plain ASCII, the format used by URIs.

* Transliteration support means that characters outside of the standard character set allowed in URIs won't just be stripped from the URI, leaving words with letters missing. For example, ?????? is replaced with ??a??, ????? is replaced with ??ss?? etc.

* The transliteration support extends to supporting the UTF-8 character set, so Japanese, Chinese characters etc. are all handled easily!




Organise EZ-Pages into Site Sections


* By putting a bit of thought into the format of URI mappings for EZ-Pages, it is possible to organise them into logical sections.

* EZ-Pages no longer have to appear as being ??root?? pages of the site!

* For example, a ??Company?? section could be created with 4 EZ-Pages using URI mappings such as the following:

/company
/company/about_us
/company/about_us/endorsements
/company/how_to_find_us




[Updated for 3.0.0] Ability to use Static URIs for any Zen Cart page


* There are two methods for using static URIs for any Zen Cart page, both of which have full support for having a ??current?? URI, as many historical/??old?? URIs as necessary and are fully multi-lingual!:


1. [New for 3.0.0] Static URIs can be used for any Zen Cart page by directly entering the static URI for the page and the type of the page in the database table for the module.

* Using this method to specify static URIs for a Zen Cart page will cause every link to that page to use the static URI instead of the dynamic Zen Cart URI.

* For example, to create a static URI for ??index.php?main_page=specials??:

uri: /latest_offers

main_page: specials


2. Static URIs can also be used for any Zen Cart page by directly entering the URIs to map from and to in the database table for the module:

* These Zen Cart pages being mapped to can have their GET variables initialised, allowing data to be loaded for the page, as if the full dynamic URL had been used. For example:

uri: /surveys/shipping

* Could map to a custom survey page, with the necessary ID for the survey to be shown:

alternate_uri: /index.php?main_page=survey&survey_id=2

* Please note: There is no admin interface for entering these URI mappings in this module, they have to be entered manually (using software such as PHPMyAdmin).




Automatic Usage of any URI mappings Defined for Categories, Products, EZ-Pages or any other Zen Cart page!


* The module modifies the main zen_href_link function slightly to make automatic use of any URI mappings defined for a category, product, EZ-Page or other Zen Cart page.

* Having each page link to each other using their static URIs makes the site easier to navigate and increases the usage of keywords on the site, further helping SEO!




[Updated for 3.0.0] Ability to use Static URIs as an Alias for any other Static URI


* The module can be used to redirect from one static URI to an alternative URI (even to an external URI).

* [New for 3.0.0] The exact type of redirection (temporary/permanent etc.) can even be controlled, by specifying the HTTP Status Code to be used for the redirection to the alternative URI.

* Creating aliases allows the store to handle visits to broken/old links.

* It also allows the store to increase the number of keywords being used to link to a page on the site through the creation of an alternative link/alias.

* Please note: There is no admin interface for entering these URI mappings in this module, they have to be entered manually (using software such as PHPMyAdmin).




[New for 3.0.0] Automated support for standard Zen Cart pages related to a Product


* The Reviews and Tell-A-Friend sections are automatically made ??subsections?? of the product's main info page, by appending some specific URI parts to the product info page's static URI.

* This saves effort setting up URIs for these pages specifically for each product, creating static URIs such as:

/books/life_is_good/reviews

/books/life_is_good/tell_a_friend




100% Compatibility with Zen Cart


* Installing the module won't break any of the functionality of Zen Cart.

* The module works using Zen Cart's Initsystem so it doesn't interfere with any of its workings. Zen Cart pages have no idea the module is even running, the run-time environment appears exactly as if the module wasn't installed.

* This should mean that the module will work perfectly with most (and most likely all) other Zen Cart modules.



Transparently Handles URIs With or Without a Slash (/) at the End


* The module sees URIs with a slash at the end as identical to those without one. For example, the following are equivalent:

http://yourstore.com/books/life_is_good
http://yourstore.com/books/life_is_good/




Respects Context of a Link to a Category/Product page


* The module retains Zen Cart's category history when linking to a subcategory of another category or a linked product within another category, so the full path back through any parent categories is available. (Without this feature all categories being mapped to by a URI mapping would appear as if their only parent category was the root of the store and linked products would always show as belonging to their ??master?? category, which is not necessarily the category the customer has accessed the product from).




Support for all of Zen Cart's Standard Product Types (and more)!


* The module has full support for the standard 5 product types in Zen Cart plus the product_book type (version 4 from the Zen Cart download area).