Bypassing cgi-bin links solution 2 - community collaboration.

[MDN]

Yes, you can exclude the CGI URLs via robots.txt if you want to. But yes, you will certainly lose any page rank they would have passed. So I'm not sure why you would want to do that.

Hi Bruce, I excluded cgi pages via the Robots file because I didn't want my sites search results pages or shopping cart pages in Google's search results, these I had found when in Google and also see today with other sites:

[brucet]

Hi Lee

The nofollow tags were added in one version, as a quick fix when Google got more aggressive about duplicate content. They were removed when we added the canonical tags, which were programmatically a bit more complicated and took a bit longer to implement, but are a much better solution.

The upgrader should have stripped out the nofollow tags when the canonical tags were added. If it failed to, or you didn't allow it, then it's safe to remove them manually or revert the relevant layouts to factory settings.

Yes, you can exclude the CGI URLs via robots.txt if you want to. But yes, you will certainly lose any page rank they would have passed. So I'm not sure why you would want to do that.

I can say categorically that at the present time, the CGI links are SEO safe, Google will follow them if allowed, and it will find and process the content at the other end.

[MDN]

According to Google, canonical tags pass page rank, see https://webmasters.googleblog.com/20...canonical.html

So the links are very much alive in terms of SEO.

Yes Bruce, the canonical does make the actual landing page fine, however even SD set nofollow tags on cgi links in the past and most Robots files should be blocking them also, this is when the link in marketing lists etc becomes a non starter for SEO as your telling search engines to take no notice and not follow in the first place...

[brucet]

According to Google, canonical tags pass page rank, see https://webmasters.googleblog.com/20...canonical.html

So the links are very much alive in terms of SEO.

[MDN]

Hi Mike & Matt,

I got in touch with Norman directly on this who has a full working solution, works perfectly and is fine when logged in also, example https://www.hookandloopfasteners.co.uk

All marketing lists and best sellers are using direct code, anyone who wants this should get in touch with Norman @ Drillpine

Whilst I accept what Bruce has said on the forum regarding the use of canonical tags etc and to block cgi-links via the Robots file, this ultimately left all marketing/best seller list dead in terms of SEO, this solution solves the whole issue.

[Mike Hughes]

Matt,

are you using customer accounts? IIRC this is the main reason why sellerdeck wants links to go via the cgi-bin rather than just using the direct url such as this https://www.columnradiators4u.co.uk/...diators-1.html

[MattSMR]

Good Morning,

Sadly this no longer works on 2016, it had a good run. It generates nice urls, unfortunately on to the products parent section and not the product itself. If anyone has any ideas on a fix it would be great.

Hi Lee,

Is this code being used on MDN currently?

It would be awesome to clean up our nasty URL structure on pages like the following:
https://www.columnradiators4u.co.uk/...diators-1.html

Would be happy to look into a fix for this, time well spent I feel!

[MDN]

Good Morning,

Sadly this no longer works on 2016, it had a good run. It generates nice urls, unfortunately on to the products parent section and not the product itself. If anyone has any ideas on a fix it would be great.

[chickenhouseman]

Does this work in 2014?

I got an error when i tried..

Warning:%20odbc_connect():%20SQL%20error:%20[Microsoft][ODBC%20Driver%20Manager]

[gabrielcrowe]

6 year old code: still rockin'

[NormanRouxel]

ActinicCatalog12 is what's used for SD 2103. Also see post #40 above that links to a way to make it version independent.

[Buzby]

If i now try to use this on Sellerdeck 2013, is it still valid?

Do i just change the version number, or has ActinicCatalog also changed

("ActinicCatalog8","",""); change this to ("ActinicCatalog12","",""); or ("Sellerdeck12","","");

Sellerdeck, can you not just include this in the future?

[completerookie]

been trying to implement this bit of php code because the code I wrote didn't work , so I used this example and I run into difficulties every so often.
I think ? narrowed it down to any product reference with a hyphen in, so for instance, "tc005" - ok, "Xeryu" - ok, "g5-classic" - NO GO
I've experimented with others and anything without hyphens seems to be fine, but the moment I use the hyphens, then it can't find the parentID from within GetProdParent()

Am I missing something, or do I need to "translate" it into html entitites before calling the ODBC link ?

kev

[bangers]

Forget v10 cleaner cart/checkout aside, had actinic announced this with v10 launch and they may have had more enthusiasm for the update.

This is major as far as I am concerned and should be AUG asap.

Regards
bangers

[bangers]

Um...apologies...
Just gave it one last shot, why not I thought after drounding replied so promptly. And well lets just say it works...leave it at that.
possibly didn't completely try it as $connect = odbc_connect("ActinicCatalog10","",""); maybe one forgot to close actinic and reopen..hmmm, sorry.

Anyway all good, amazing, sorts out major actinic flaw. I'll checkout Norman's update but thanks to Gabe for thinking outside the box.

p.s Thanks to Drounding for reply.

Cheers
A happy bangers