SEO Url's not correct

[robert]

I'm having an issue with SEF urls for VM 2.

Currently the url's read category/2.html

Anyone know how I can get the real category name to replace the default? for example...

category/2.html to read like...
realcategoryname/realproductname.html

[jjk]

Maybe you didn't create a Joomla menu for your VM2 categories yet. The menu items (category names) have to be of the type 'Category Layout'.

[robert]

Actually I have created a menu link to every category.

I've tried both the "VirtueMart Categories Layout" and the "Category Layout" menu types.

I am using AceSEF and have tried a million and one combos turning VM core Seo on and OFF, I just cant figure out why VM is using the default text "category" rather than the "actual category name" in VM

any ideas?

[jjk]

I'm not using any third party SEF extension. Works nicely! - I have 'real' category names in my url.
What do you think is the advantage of using something like AceSEF?

[robert]

well one advantage to using something like AceSEF is that you can monitor and create 301 redirect to pages that may be indexed by search engines or are linked to via blog posts etc.

I switched ACEsef OFF and eveything seems to be good - BUT - I know we are going to have tons of 404 errors

I use AceSEF to log the 404's and do 301 redirects - now I can't since its not working

Do you know of an alternative way to log the 404's and create 301's??

[jjk]

I didn't use it yet, but maybe this helps: http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/joomla-25/303-using-the-redirect-manager

[robert]

looks interesting - but I am running on J 1.5

I guess it's time to upgrade - UGH

[robert]

Well upgrading isnt going to be easy so its going to take a while before that happens.

In the meantime though, I took a look on google to see some indexed urls and I see alot of my old V1 urls indexed, BUT when I click them I get blank white pages.

Not good for SEO

ol-page?page=shop.ask&flypage=&product_id=5&category_id=6

Any Idea how I can address this?

[jjk]

You could install the old (working) shop from a backup for a while until you have the new one fully operational. You could use i.e. xampp on your PC to develop your new shop offline. Since you were using VM2 already, the migration should be fairly easy, because the VM2 database tables are the same while using VM2 in J1.5 or 2.5. (It's pretty simple to export the VM2 database tables i.e. with phpMyadmin and import them again into a J2.5 database table).