Posted in Tips & Tricks August 17th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment
Has your store been open for months and still not get listed in search engines? Do you see a sudden drop in search traffic after updating your cart or changing your store template? Perhaps Google is not indexing your Zencart store?
Problem 1: incorrect robots meta tag
You may be a victim of “noindex” misuse!
Here is how to check:
- First, go to your store, right click and choose “view source” or “view page source”
- See if you can find this string: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”/>. The string is usually located just above the tag </head>
- See if the string above appears on the main page on your store
The string above is telling search engines to avoid indexing and thus listing your site on the search results. Read more…
Posted in Zencart August 17th, 2009 by admin - Comments (4)
Google has announced the use of canonical link tag not too long ago, and other search engines also follow this move. Some of you might have never heard about this term before so I will give you a very brief definition here:
Because of the use of dynamic urls, one single web page can have more than 1 valid urls (address) pointing to it. Google as well as other search engines will more than likely pick of these links as official link and the others are flagged as duplicated content. The problem is that we are not sure which link will be picked. The canonical tag allows you to do just that: to tell THE LINK you want to use as the official one. Read more…
Posted in Tips & Tricks August 13th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment
In this post I will show you how to use the 3 most powerful tools to tweak and edit your Zencart! Please note that I make some foolish assumptions here: I assume you know a bit about php and are familiar with HTML and CSS.
First, if you have never used Firefox, it’s time to get the fox
Once you have Firefox installed on your computer, you can now grab the bug
Read more…
Posted in Tips & Tricks,eCommerce August 12th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment
Ehh? SSL? What is it?
SSL: Secure Sockets Layer (this is the predecessor of TLS)
TLS: Transport Layer Security
What are they: cryptographic protocols that provide security and data integrity for communications over networks such as the Internet. TLS and SSL encrypt the segments of network connections at the Transport Layer end-to-end. (wikipedia)
Why is it important (technically): The TLS protocol allows client/server applications to communicate across a network in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. TLS provides endpoint authentication and communications confidentiality over the Internet using cryptography. (please view the wikipedia link above for more info) Read more…
Posted in Add Ons August 8th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment
Are you spending too much time on your Zencart’s template? Zencart currently uses different listing template file for different listings:
For homepage you have at least 3 main listing:
- Special products
- Featured products
- New products
For other listing pages you have
- Category listing
- New product page
- Special product page
- Featured product page
Read more…
Posted in Zencart August 8th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment
I have decided to remove “nofollow” feature of WordPress. For people who comment on this blog, this can be a great news because the link of your website and links in your comment will be counted as “votes” to those specific pages (thus helping you to boost your page ranking a bit).
We love helpful comments. Please note that all comments a moderated by our team before they get published, so please don’t spam.
Posted in Add Ons August 8th, 2009 by admin - Comments (36)
Yes, Zencart Css Javascript Loader aka CJ Loader is finally released (well, technically it has been released for a while but this is the first official version).
This 1.6 version is packed with tons of new features that will SPEED UP your Zencart store and MAKE LIFE EASIER for you.
At a glance:
- Productivity boost
- Conflict Free
- Performance Boost
- User Friendly / Cross browser compatibility Read more…
Posted in Ajax Checkout August 6th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment
I came across this great research just a few days ago: the important of label placement on forms
We have tested it on a client’s site and have seen some minor improvement so we plan to test this on more sites and eventually employ the “best practice” described in the article if the effect is proven.
Posted in Downloads August 6th, 2009 by admin - Comments (63)
Alrite, so we have been asked about it many times and we also do have to use it on our projects for customers that set up new stores (or upgrade to 1.3.8a)
So here is Zen1.3.8a with all patches applied. The package will be updated whenever a new patch comes out so your best bet is to return here whenever you need a new package of Zen 1.3.8a.
Hope this will help you out.
Link to download: (this now being updated by Philip Clarke)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/shopupgraded/files/
If you think this is useful, please help others by spreading the news about this package (and help them to avoid wasting time apply all these patches)
Posted in Tips & Tricks August 6th, 2009 by admin - Comments (6)
ONCE upon a time not so long ago, one partner wanted to display a “short description” for the product, which is totally different from the description used in the product page. There are several good reasons for that:
- By default Zencart can help you to display the first X characters, however this cannot help you to give the customers a good summary of the product (good for customers)
- Using a customized short description can let you craft your own keyword-rich description on the listing page (good for seo, if you don’t overdo it)
Read more…
