Maybe there are some reasons why in VM2 the categories are in the URL's, but I definitely don't want this on our website. How can I remove it?
If you move a product to a different category or remove it from a category, the url will always change. Otherwise VirtueMart has no chance to determine to which category a product belongs. If you want to keep the original url, I would simply type something like "archived product/sold out" into the availability field.
From- http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=19c9117d715002105a029d0891e48d0d&topic=111461.msg374728#msg374728
Thanks, but I don't need to move any products or anything, I just want my URL's to be nice. In the old Virtuemart this wasn't a problem at all.
Can't wait till this bug is fixed, I almost regret migrating to VM2 actually...
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 21, 2013, 11:08:42 AM
Thanks, but I don't need to move any products or anything, I just want my URL's to be nice.
Oh God! Use Joomla Redirect Component. Rest in peace!
Quote from: Maxim Pishnyak on June 21, 2013, 22:12:51 PM
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 21, 2013, 11:08:42 AM
Thanks, but I don't need to move any products or anything, I just want my URL's to be nice.
Oh God! Use Joomla Redirect Component. Rest in peace!
Oh god! That's not really a solution, is it? Since VM 2 should be a improvement over VM1, why don't they just do it right? Hopefully at least support for sh404SEF will be improved... For the first time since using Joomla for years, I've been considering Wordpress for this particular website.
VM2's SEO is much better than it ever was in VM1. I wonder why you insist on deteriorating your SEO (Maybe you prefer to end up on page 250 of the search engine results). And sh404sef will not help to make the standard Joomla/VM2 SEF urls better. Instead it will slow down your shop considerably as your number of products grows.
That's because products in a shop like VirtueMart are accessible in various ways and extensions like sh404sef store each possible url in their database table. So when you have i.e. 1000 products, sh404sef might have 5000 different urls in it's database which you have to maintain (numbers not measured - just a possible example).
Agree completely
sh404sef - euch!
Nightmare to maintain and makes sites SOOOOOOO slow!
@Hutson
sh404sef and similar extensions were useful for small Joomla 1.5 sites, but nowadays - especially when used for a shopping cart - I think the result is similar to this small cart desaster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buFcalm3BF4
:)
Difference is that they managed to sort out the donkey problem!
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 22, 2013, 02:13:27 AM
Quote from: Maxim Pishnyak on June 21, 2013, 22:12:51 PM
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 21, 2013, 11:08:42 AM
Thanks, but I don't need to move any products or anything, I just want my URL's to be nice.
Oh God! Use Joomla Redirect Component. Rest in peace!
Oh god! That's not really a solution, is it? Since VM 2 should be a improvement over VM1, why don't they just do it right?
You're wrong. Using redirects is the TYPICAL solution in SEO practice.
Did we bought tickets to spectating your TRAGEDY "MY CATEGORY LINKS MUST REMAIN THE SAME TILL THE END OF WORLD"??
What did you do with promoting these links? You had printed em on your visit cards or what?
Nevertheless it would be nice to know why jeetjezeg thinks that an url like domain/product1' is important.
Indeed it would be useful to know why the category that a product belongs to is not useful in the URL
Ok, so I'm trying to accept that all of our URLs will change big time because of VM2, and yes maybe it's not so bad after all. We use the URLs in our communication a lot, and many products are in more than one categorie and it just gets very confusing which URL to communicate (which category to choose?). Also I just prefer shorter urls...
But can I please ask you guys something else, that is related to this. While accepting that our URLs will be much longer from now on, I find it difficult to accept that VM in some cases adds even more to the URL. When I'm in a category and I want to navigate to the next page, the url changes from this: site.com/category/product-name to this: site.com/categories/home/category/results13-24. This also happens when I'm creating a sitemap with Xmap.
I really don't want this, I think it's ugly and very unnecessary, and also it's just very confusing that every page within VM 2 has several URLs. How can I avoid that these words are being added to my URLs? And why 'categories' (which is not in the site language by the way) as well as 'home'? Why home?
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 24, 2013, 16:04:53 PM
site.com/category/product-name to this: site.com/categories/home/category/results13-24
Create menu link to your "category" directly (each of em). It could be menu link(s) in hidden menu.
Quote from: Maxim Pishnyak on June 24, 2013, 17:16:25 PM
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 24, 2013, 16:04:53 PM
site.com/category/product-name to this: site.com/categories/home/category/results13-24
Create menu link to your "category" directly (each of em). It could be menu link(s) in hidden menu.
I'm only using the default VM category module and I have the VM Frontpage assigned to my main menu...
So I should create a manual menu with all the categories in stead of using the default VM category module you think?
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 25, 2013, 05:08:06 AM
So I should create a manual menu with all the categories in stead of using the default VM category module you think?
Manual menu will control the look of category links.
Default Vm category module hasn't freedom to control such things.
BTW there's a plugin in 3d party forum sections. This free plugin could create menu links for each categories in this manual menu for you.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
VM2's SEO is much better than it ever was in VM1. I wonder why you insist on deteriorating your SEO (Maybe you prefer to end up on page 250 of the search engine results). And sh404sef will not help to make the standard Joomla/VM2 SEF urls better. Instead it will slow down your shop considerably as your number of products grows.
That's because products in a shop like VirtueMart are accessible in various ways and extensions like sh404sef store each possible url in their database table. So when you have i.e. 1000 products, sh404sef might have 5000 different urls in it's database which you have to maintain (numbers not measured - just a possible example).
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ironman Games (http://myironmangames.com)
So what about organic search results? If we have hundreds of pages already indexed by Google as http://domainname.com/product1 and now they are all going to be http://domainname.com/category/product1 is there an easy way to deal with this when we bring our new VM2 site online?
use this and do some pattern matching
http://www.sistemistica.it/redj.html (http://www.sistemistica.it/redj.html)
I use it whenever I change categories or remove products etc
Thanks for the tip. This will be a big help.
Quote from: Maxim Pishnyak on June 25, 2013, 12:02:28 PM
Quote from: jeetjezeg on June 25, 2013, 05:08:06 AM
So I should create a manual menu with all the categories in stead of using the default VM category module you think?
Manual menu will control the look of category links.
Default Vm category module hasn't freedom to control such things.
BTW there's a plugin in 3d party forum sections. This free plugin could create menu links for each categories in this manual menu for you.
I was unable to find the automatic menu creation plugin you referenced. Do you have a link?
I doubt, though, that this would solve the duplicate URLs issue, which arises when a single product is published within multiple categories. It would seem that the addition of a menu item for each category, when you have have over 500 of them, would cause a significant impact upon server resources and load time. Additionally, manually creating these links is extremely time consuming.
As for the SEF component method, there are two concerns. The first is the additional load on resources and site speed an SEF component tends to cause. The second, when the stability of the component declines or component support dies, your SEO work and all its historical inbound links dies. SEF components that have supported Virtuemart have suffered this fate throughout the years. Each time, the Virtuemart site owner who made use of the component suffers. Therefore, Virtuemart suffers.
It is not a wise practice for Virtuemart to delegate a portion of its stability and reputation to another component for handling an issue that should be solved internally.
VM does not need a thrid party plugin for SEO
Neither does it require a third party plugin for display of categories
Duplicate Urls for items in differing categories is a feature, NOT a problem
Find the time to manually create menu items for categories if you are choosing to do such a thing, if not use the standard category component available in VM or use the default shop page
I'm not interested in a third party plugin and not interested in manually creating menu items.
The duplicate URL feature, while not a problem for most, would be best deployed as a configuration option, which would enable it to be switched off.
Thank you once again for your response. The other thread seems to address the issue best.
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=116324
Unfortunately for you, at this moment in time, the VM team appear to be even less interested in spending their time trying to solve your particular issue.
The feature of including a category in the url is clearly an issue for you and not for others.
It may be that you could use their paid for development service, in order to achieve what your require.
A paid inclusion of the option is definitely a possibility. Thanks again.
I hope the VM team go for it!
Thanks for your patience.
I comment in file: com_virtuemart/router.php
//$categoryRoute = $helper->getCategoryRoute($query['virtuemart_category_id']);
and... it works for me.
Red John: Thanks for your reply. Your suggestion worked.
I found there are two references of that code, one at line 84 and the other at line 149. Removing or commenting out line 84 will eliminate your ability to navigate through category links, as they will all be directed to Virtuemart root. Therefore, comment out line 149 and received the following favorable result.
ORIGINAL URL - http://dirtarmory.com/parts/18/509/automotive/4x4-truck-suv/jeep/jeep-wrangler-tj/smittybilt-xrc-rock-crawler-winch-bumper-grill-guard-d-ring-mounts-wrangler-tj-rubicon-unlimited-1997-2006-product
MODIFIED URL - http://dirtarmory.com/parts/18/smittybilt-xrc-rock-crawler-winch-bumper-grill-guard-d-ring-mounts-wrangler-tj-rubicon-unlimited-1997-2006-product
ACTION - Navigate to components/com_virtuemart/ directory. Within the router.php at approximately line 149, comment out (wrapping the code within /**/) or remove the following code.
$categoryRoute = $helper->getCategoryRoute($query['virtuemart_category_id']);
Try... Go to virtuemart seo setting and uncheck product id in category.