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    Simple foward/redirect

    Ok, I have my stupid brain on today.

    If I want to get customers directly to a specific category using a clear URL how do I do that? I know how to redirect regular and subdomains at my registrar but I a looking for a dead simple pointer to the landing category.

    Here's an example: I want to go from this http://www.preparesmart.com/mm5/merc...ry_Code=GOHERE

    ...to this: http://www.preparesmart.com/GOHERE

    Please help me get through this brain cramp!
    Keith Oratz
    PrepareSmart, LLC - Emergency Preparedness Supplies and Professional Grade Search and Rescue Gear
    www.preparesmart.com

    #2
    Re: Simple foward/redirect

    Miva Merchant offers stock short link capabilities under Domain Settings > SEO Settings in the admin. That said, you need to be extremely careful what you do to an existing site in this area because a url change without proper 301 redirects in place will tank current search engine rankings. It appears Google has approx 729 landing pages indexed for your site, so a url change like this without the proper planning and precautions could be very detrimental to your business.

    I can also tell you that the stock features are not capable of producing the short link structure specified, ie. /GOHERE. A 3rd party module would be required to obtain that particular format, however there are additional considerations that need to be taken here as well. The stock short link features rely on indentifiers to separate categories from products, ie. /category/somecat.html and /product/someprod.html. (these identifiers can be customized)

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Simple foward/redirect

      Keith,

      My Page Finder module can generate short links of the form you're looking for, without extra markers such as /product/ .

      I also have a module that can issue 301 redirects for old product or category codes.

      Drop me a line if you're interested in either of these.

      Thanks --
      Kent Multer
      Magic Metal Productions
      http://TheMagicM.com
      * Web developer/designer
      * E-commerce and Miva
      * Author, The Official Miva Web Scripting Book -- available on-line:
      http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/IS...icmetalproducA

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Simple foward/redirect

        Dan,

        Wouldn't a redirect for a SINGLE category (used perhaps only for direct emails) be fine? Which, in that case using and htaccess rule of

        Redirect /mm5/merchant.mvc?etc http://www.domain.com/new/url

        work as long as its the first rule?
        Bruce Golub
        Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

        Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
        phosphormedia.com

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Simple foward/redirect

          If it is just for a SINGLE category, then yes, that would be different. Wasn't sure if that was the case or not with the request.

          Short link rewrite would need to be implemented in the .htaccess file for the url to work, then that format could simply be used in the marketing materials as necessary. Really no need for a redirect in that situation, unless the marketing materials have already been sent out with the dynamic url.

          Guess I need more specifics on this one.
          Last edited by Dan - Glendale Designs; 06-12-14, 03:05 PM.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Simple foward/redirect

            Yes, in this case it is for a single category (basically using it as the landing page) via a link from an external site.

            Is there a tutorial for this or can someone tell me how to implement Bruce's suggestion?

            Thanks
            Keith Oratz
            PrepareSmart, LLC - Emergency Preparedness Supplies and Professional Grade Search and Rescue Gear
            www.preparesmart.com

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Simple foward/redirect

              Originally posted by Bruce - PhosphorMedia View Post
              Dan,

              Wouldn't a redirect for a SINGLE category (used perhaps only for direct emails) be fine? Which, in that case using and htaccess rule of

              Redirect /mm5/merchant.mvc?etc http://www.domain.com/new/url

              work as long as its the first rule?
              This will not work because the Redirect command does not look at query strings. It needs to be a full rewrite.

              RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} Category_Code=GOHERE
              RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.preparesmart.com/GOHERE [R=301,L]

              Although perhaps this is not what is actually wanted. Keitho; did you want to take a long link and turn it into a short link, or did you want a simple to use short link that gets an incoming visitor to what you actually wanted? If the latter, then what you need actually would be the Redirect command:

              Redirect 301 /GOHERE http://www.preparesmart.com/mm5/merc...ry_Code=GOHERE

              or if you do have short links:

              Redirect 301 /GOHERE http://www.preparesmart.com/c/GOHERE (if you use /c/ as the category prefix for example)

              Regarding modules that eliminate a prefix, suffix or some kind of pattern that can be used to differentiate products, categories, etc; I do not recommend using those because I have yet to see one that did not incur a noticeable performance penalty on a busy site. This is not directed at Kent specifically as there are several modules I've seen for this purpose, but not his.

              I have seen time and time again that these modules cause very busy sites to perform extremely poorly, so while there was no apparent issue when the module was installed, you're successful, your traffic grows considerably and then you really feel the pain while having no way to get rid of it because all your links have been built around it. The reason these modules seem to cause issues is twofold. First there's bogus traffic. Because you basically have to map any and all requests for anything into your store; bogus traffic, like that generated by infected copies of wordpress looking for other copies of wordpress to infect, could generate hundreds of random requests to your site for various files that do not exist. Instead of the web server taking a few microseconds to return a 404, now a 1/3+ second Miva Merchant request has to be launched for each one, generating significant load on the server. Having at least a prefix for all store requests will reduce these occurrences, but not eliminate them. The second issue, is even legit requests are now slower, because the module has to take this code that came in and do a scan of the screen code table, product table and category table looking for matches.
              David Hubbard
              CIO
              Miva
              [email protected]
              http://www.miva.com

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Simple foward/redirect

                Thanks all. David, your approach using...

                Redirect 301 /GOHERE http://www.preparesmart.com/mm5/merc...ry_Code=GOHERE...

                works for the redirect but now the items aren't being found.

                The URL we want to use is - www.preparesmart.com/makeitthrough

                The category in question is - http://www.preparesmart.com/category/makeitthrough.html

                I was working with the Miva technical staff overnight and they turned on our short links and SEO friendly first page so I went with this format of the 301.

                Redirect 301 /makeitthrough http://www.preparesmart.com/category/makeitthrough.html

                Now I get to the category page but the items aren't found. All of the other categories are working well with the short links. The problem must be with Redirect command. Can someone help me fix it?
                Keith Oratz
                PrepareSmart, LLC - Emergency Preparedness Supplies and Professional Grade Search and Rescue Gear
                www.preparesmart.com

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Simple foward/redirect

                  Code:
                  Redirect 301 /makeitthrough http://www.preparesmart.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=makeitthrough
                  David's format should work, unless you don't want the url to be redirected to the dynamic url format when the visitor reaches the landing page, in which case that is a whole nother can of worms. This redirect should be implemented above all other rewrites/redirects in your .htaccess file. Also make sure you are clearing your cache or hitting reload a couple of times before testing.
                  Last edited by Dan - Glendale Designs; 06-13-14, 09:46 AM.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Simple foward/redirect

                    I think you've just got an error in your category template. What code do you have in it for the generation of the product page links?
                    David Hubbard
                    CIO
                    Miva
                    [email protected]
                    http://www.miva.com

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Simple foward/redirect

                      I noticed that a number of components on your site have been fully converted to short links at this point. Depending on the specific setup of your store, this may have taken place automatically when Miva Merchant support enabled the short link features. As I stated previously, there are some precautions that should be taken with a mass url change like that. Highly recommend you followup to either back that out, or have the necessary precautions put in place to prevent ranking loss/duplicate content.

                      Comment

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