Search engine friendly URLs

To enable SEF functionality in your osCommerce, you need to install a SEF contribution. There are several SEF contributions for osCommerce, but in this tutorial we'll focus on installing (probably the best) one - Ultimate SEO URLs. You can download Ultimate SEF contribution here.

After downloading the .zip archive on your local computer, please extract it in a directory of your choice.

Please make sure you backup up your files and database before installing the contribution. Find more information on how to backup your files and database here.

Then you should upload the files from the catalog folder to your osCommerce directory, overwriting the existing files. Please note that if your shop is highly modified, overwriting the existing files may break your osCommerce installation.

After that you should modify the .htaccess file, changing catalog in this line:

RewriteBase /catalog/

to the folder of your osCommerce.

Then, in the admin/includes/languages/english/categories.php file, before the final ?> you should add:

define('TEXT_PRODUCTS_SEO_URL', 'Products SEO URL:');
define('TEXT_EDIT_CATEGORIES_SEO_URL', 'Category SEO URL:');
define('TEXT_CATEGORIES_SEO_URL', 'Category SEO URL:');

The last step is updating your database. Please go to your cPanel -> MySQL Databases -> phpMyAdmin. Once there, select your osCommerce database from the drop-down menu on the left, click on SQL and in the blank field paste these SQL queries:

ALTER TABLE 'categories_description' ADD 'categories_seo_url' VARCHAR( 100 ) NOT NULL ;
ALTER TABLE 'products_description' ADD 'products_seo_url' VARCHAR( 100 ) NOT NULL;

Then click on [Go] and the queries will be executed.

Now you should login to your osCommerce admin area. Under Configuration you will have a new setting - SEO URLs. Click on it to configure your newly installed SEF contribution: