Miva ecommerce links and search engines.

#1

I am launching an online store using Miva very soon. I have noticed
that the links are quite long

http://amazinghighs.com/Merchant2/me...egory_Code=GDS
for example.

What can i do to ensure that the search engines pick these up?

#2

__/ [Antigravity] on Wednesday 07 December 2005 10:22 \__

Quote:

I am launching an online store using Miva very soon. I have noticed
that the links are quite long

http://amazinghighs.com/Merchant2/me...egory_Code=GDS
for example.

What can i do to ensure that the search engines pick these up?

I can't see why search engines should be reluctant to 'pick up' long URL's.
PHP-Nuke generates some very long URL's and it gets crawled all right. The
URL's are not SEO-friendly though.

The URL above in not obscenely long, but admittedly, some of your visitors
will be reluctant to pass links along. Yahoo are quite notorious for long
URL's and one issue that crops to mind is line wrapping or width limits in
UseNet, in Web pages, and in E-mail. That often breaks your links,
trigerring errors in your site (=time). Ensure your URL's serve as a nice
breadcrumb trail with meaningful words rather than numbers and codes. It
makes everybody happier. Examples:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4500482.stm

Short, good context, but iffy code.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051207/...NqBHNlYwM3NDk-

WTF?

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5...=zdfd.newsfeed

Short enough, but meaningless

Hope it helps,

Roy

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#3

mod_rewrite

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"Antigravity" <webmaster (AT) antigravitywebdesign (DOT) co.uk> wrote

Quote:

I am launching an online store using Miva very soon. I have noticed
that the links are quite long

http://amazinghighs.com/Merchant2/me...egory_Code=GDS
for example.

What can i do to ensure that the search engines pick these up?

#4

Tks Roy

I dont have any control (i think) over the format of the URLs as they
are generated by the Miva commerce software. However, i do plan to make
a "front page" for the shop in good ole HTML stuffed with keywords and
links to the shop URLs in the hope that the search engines will be
sucked into the site through the splash page links.

#5

__/ [Antigravity] on Wednesday 07 December 2005 15:09 \__

Quote:

Tks Roy

I dont have any control (i think) over the format of the URLs as they
are generated by the Miva commerce software. However, i do plan to make
a "front page" for the shop in good ole HTML stuffed with keywords and
links to the shop URLs in the hope that the search engines will be
sucked into the site through the splash page links.

I honestly think that the one-word reply was redundant. With a CMS in
place, a mod_rewrite would be too complex to set up, let alone generalise
to all pages. A front page would be a wise step. Try to find out, with the
aid of search engines, about workarounds people have devised to shorten
Miva URL's or make them reflect on the page titles (/slugs).

Good luck,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Software patents destroy innovation
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
3:15pm up 12:26, 5 users, load average: 0.57, 0.30, 0.18
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms

#6

In article <dn6ugp$2lr5$1 (AT) godfrey (DOT) mcc.ac.uk>, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> writes

Quote:

__/ [Antigravity] on Wednesday 07 December 2005 15:09 \__

I dont have any control (i think) over the format of the URLs as they
are generated by the Miva commerce software. However, i do plan to make
a "front page" for the shop in good ole HTML stuffed with keywords and
links to the shop URLs in the hope that the search engines will be
sucked into the site through the splash page links.

I honestly think that the one-word reply was redundant. With a CMS in
place, a mod_rewrite would be too complex to set up, let alone generalise
to all pages. A front page would be a wise step. Try to find out, with the
aid of search engines, about workarounds people have devised to shorten
Miva URL's or make them reflect on the page titles (/slugs).

Does anyone know how popular Miva is compared to the alternatives, ASP
PHP, CGI/perl etc.? I never hear much about it, but it is available for
use on two of my sites.
--
Philip Baker

#7

On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 02:19:04 +0000, Philip Baker <news (AT) thalasson (DOT) com>
wrote:

Quote:

Does anyone know how popular Miva is compared to the alternatives, ASP
PHP, CGI/perl etc.? I never hear much about it, but it is available for
use on two of my sites.
--
Philip Baker

I found it to be pretty slow on both the administration side as well
as the user side. Also they have spun off a veritable cottage industry
of mods and hacks to make up for some features that were lacking.

I guess that doesn't answer the popularity question though. I think
their distribution model has been via hosting companies so it becomes
the ecommerce solution of choice for many based on that.

I've had better luck with OSCommerce. Very full featured yet has it's
own set of special headaches. I use OSCommerce at
http://www.catspajamas.biz but have sidestepped it's product display
capabilities in favor of my homegrown web publishing system that
accesses the mysql database to create the product pages. I'm in the
process of sidestepping 90% of their admin system as well.

Mutant Bluegrass That Rocks!
http://www.thepickadillos.com

#8

__/ [Philip Baker] on Thursday 08 December 2005 02:19 \__

Quote:

In article <dn6ugp$2lr5$1 (AT) godfrey (DOT) mcc.ac.uk>, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> writes
__/ [Antigravity] on Wednesday 07 December 2005 15:09 \__

I dont have any control (i think) over the format of the URLs as they
are generated by the Miva commerce software. However, i do plan to make
a "front page" for the shop in good ole HTML stuffed with keywords and
links to the shop URLs in the hope that the search engines will be
sucked into the site through the splash page links.

I honestly think that the one-word reply was redundant. With a CMS in
place, a mod_rewrite would be too complex to set up, let alone generalise
to all pages. A front page would be a wise step. Try to find out, with the
aid of search engines, about workarounds people have devised to shorten
Miva URL's or make them reflect on the page titles (/slugs).

Does anyone know how popular Miva is compared to the alternatives, ASP
PHP, CGI/perl etc.? I never hear much about it, but it is available for
use on two of my sites.

If my opinion is of any use, I have never heard of Miva before you mentioned
it. I know a large number of non-commercial content management systems. In
fact, you take them all for a live spin:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

If you do some research, you can probably find out how many times Miva was
downloaded, how many times it was installed and how many unique sites
(still) run it. What counts as much as the userbase is the state of
development. You probably don't want to see support and active maintenance
reaching cessation.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
3:25am up 1 day 0:36, 5 users, load average: 0.83, 0.66, 0.60
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms

#9

In article <vn9fp1t0fffl4jo9h8bnfhk3pei7a0ntl5 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>, Steve Harder-
Kucera <steve (AT) no-spam-betterwaywebsites (DOT) com> writes

Quote:

On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 02:19:04 +0000, Philip Baker <news (AT) thalasson (DOT) com
wrote:

Does anyone know how popular Miva is compared to the alternatives, ASP
PHP, CGI/perl etc.? I never hear much about it, but it is available for
use on two of my sites.
--
Philip Baker

I found it to be pretty slow on both the administration side as well
as the user side. Also they have spun off a veritable cottage industry
of mods and hacks to make up for some features that were lacking.

I guess that doesn't answer the popularity question though. I think
their distribution model has been via hosting companies so it becomes
the ecommerce solution of choice for many based on that.

I've had better luck with OSCommerce. Very full featured yet has it's
own set of special headaches. I use OSCommerce at
http://www.catspajamas.biz but have sidestepped it's product display
capabilities in favor of my homegrown web publishing system that
accesses the mysql database to create the product pages. I'm in the
process of sidestepping 90% of their admin system as well.

Mutant Bluegrass That Rocks!
http://www.thepickadillos.com

Thanks for the info. I think I will stick with CGI/perl and PHP.
--
Philip Baker

#10

In article <dn89e7$hi$1 (AT) godfrey (DOT) mcc.ac.uk>, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> writes

Quote:

__/ [Philip Baker] on Thursday 08 December 2005 02:19 \__

In article <dn6ugp$2lr5$1 (AT) godfrey (DOT) mcc.ac.uk>, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> writes
__/ [Antigravity] on Wednesday 07 December 2005 15:09 \__

I dont have any control (i think) over the format of the URLs as they
are generated by the Miva commerce software. However, i do plan to make
a "front page" for the shop in good ole HTML stuffed with keywords and
links to the shop URLs in the hope that the search engines will be
sucked into the site through the splash page links.

I honestly think that the one-word reply was redundant. With a CMS in
place, a mod_rewrite would be too complex to set up, let alone generalise
to all pages. A front page would be a wise step. Try to find out, with the
aid of search engines, about workarounds people have devised to shorten
Miva URL's or make them reflect on the page titles (/slugs).

Does anyone know how popular Miva is compared to the alternatives, ASP
PHP, CGI/perl etc.? I never hear much about it, but it is available for
use on two of my sites.

If my opinion is of any use, I have never heard of Miva before you mentioned
it. I know a large number of non-commercial content management systems. In
fact, you take them all for a live spin:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

If you do some research, you can probably find out how many times Miva was
downloaded, how many times it was installed and how many unique sites
(still) run it. What counts as much as the userbase is the state of
development. You probably don't want to see support and active maintenance
reaching cessation.

Roy

The two sites I referred to are hosted by Webfusion/Pipex. They have
perl, PHP and Miva available and as far as I recall some Miva scripts
available for use. In fact I think it is only there that I've ever
encountered Miva.
--
Philip Baker