markomedia - web development

I’ve been exploring Zen Cart shopping cart for a long time and one thing that, I thought, needed improvement was the support for friendly URLs. Ultimate SEO URLs break my site and I needed another solution. I found this little beauty called Simple SEO URL and it works beautifully.  It’s a little tricky to set up, but it’s worth the effort.  Installation process will take you about 15-20 minutes.
I use Zen Cart 1.3.8a and SSU 3.8.3. If you have different version(s) the following steps may not work.

Download Simple SEO URL

Requirements
1. PHP 5
2. mod_rewrite enabled on your Apache web server
3. Zen Cart Module Manager installed

Installation
1. Unzip and upload your files to web server
2. Go to Admin==>Extras==>SSU Manager
3. Open path_to_store/.htaccess and add:

If your .htaccess file already has stuff in it, do not overwrite it. Simply append the following:

#### BOF SSU
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
# Change "/zencart/ to the correct setting
# if your site is located at root folder, then you should have RewriteBase /
# Go to your include/configure.php, this value should be the same with the value of DIR_WS_CATALOG
RewriteBase /zencart/
 
# Deny access from .htaccess
RewriteRule ^.htaccess$ - [F]
 
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule .* - [L]
 
RewriteRule ^(.+) index.php/ [E=VAR1:,QSA,L]
#### EOF SSU

Make sure your “RewriteBase” path is correct.
4. Set path_to_cache_folder/ssu and its subfolders permission to 0777
5. Now go to Admin==>Configuration==>Simple SEO URL to enable and configure your friendly URLs.

That’s it.  You can also test your installation http://yoursite/ssu_check.php after which you can remove ssu_check.php from your server.

Marko