Magento rewrites and layered navigation - magento

I'm having a problem with a Magento shop.
I'll explain it a bit:
Our shop has over 25k products.
We use a lot of attributes because it's a fashion shop. (size, color, brand etc.)
Our shop had over a thousend categories and was very slow because of so many categories, so we narrowed it down to 7 categories and added more attributes to help us filter.
The problem now however is the layered navigation. Let me show you an example:
When going to a category and selecting filters, the link is like this:
http://example.com/kinderkleding.html?doelgroep=jongenskleding&artikelgroep=broeken
The link that we want is:
http://example.com/kinderkleding/jongenskleding/broeken.html
We have tried many different extentions like GoMage Layered Navigation and SEO Layered Navigation. The first one didn't work at all with this and the second one adds a "identifier" to the link. This means the link would be like this:
/kinderkleding/shopby/jongenskleding/broeken.html
So it adds "shopby" in the link. This is very bad for our SEO.
We need the link without the "shopby".
We tried to rewrite our own links in Magento but that didn't work. We've got links like this with Magento rewrites: /kinderkleding/jongenskleding/broeken.html?doelgroep=jongenskleding&artikelgroep=broeken
Is there any way this can be fixed by an extension or custom php code?
We've tried so many different things.
Is there anyone with a suggestion?
I've made the last 2 links bold because I can't seem to be able to post more than 2 links.

Related

Unique category/brand URLs in Magento 1 with Amasty plugin

Both of these URLs will render the same results:
example.com/brands/adidas/shopby/mens
example.com/mens/shopby/adidas
These combinations are possible because there is a /brand and /mens entry point, then the layered navigation (amasty) will allow different combinations. Ideally, these 2 URLs shouldn't exist, I'd like to have only 1 version of this specific set of combinations for SEO purposes.
How do you do this?
Note: We are using Magento 1 with Amasty layered navigation
Possible solution:
By adding a "new page" in the layered navigation, I can control the canonical URL, so when bots land on example.com/brands/adidas/shopby/mens or example.com/mens/shopby/adidas, I can choose to rel canonical to example.com/brands/adidas/shopby/mens and therefore solve the problem. This will work, but it's not scaleable as it needs manual configuration and very prone to human error.
Realize that this not a technical issue related, it is a content issue.
You are replicating the catalog in distinct categories because you have categories that are attributes and vice versa.
If you don't want to change the catalog you can remove one of those categories in robots.txt
Disallow: /brands/adidas/shopby/*
Cheers

Adding multiple items to special page

I have a quick how to question with Magento.
On my main site I need to have 7 links to special "categories" of items, but these don;t reflect categories of items. It is for a clothes shop so link may be to a summer wear page to only display items tagged as summer wear but from all types of item and categories.
What would the best way to go about creating this functionality?
I am assuming that when you say 'taged' you mean the product has a attribute set to 'summer'. In that case:
If you have products that you want to group together by attribute and list similar to a category page without being in a category, you could try using the Fishpig Splash Page extension:
http://fishpig.co.uk/attribute-splash-pages.html
This extensions allows product attributes to group products instead of categories.
I hope I understood your question correctly.
You can create categories for each of the 7 pages you mention, but hide them from the navigation in the category settings page.
you can then add your products to these categories as you see fit.
They will still be in their original categories too, but you can now link to the new pages and see them there too.
It seems like to me, you would just create the categories like normal. Because products can belong to many categories, you would just assign on a per-product basis which ones need to be in your categories.

Shop This Look / Shop By Look - Create page with multiple products and quickcart

I’m wanting to build a Shop This Look page that will be easily editable and up-datable without too much hacking every time it’s updated.
Ideally I would like it to work like this: http://shop.crooksncastles.com/collections/shop-by-look-mens-look-2
In that I upload a photo of the look and then select the products to appear (Even if it’s through using their productids).
My thoughts on how to achieve this:
1) Create a category specifically for each look but have them set to hidden. Eg.
Looks>
* Look1
* Look2
* Look3
2) Then display the category in a static block on a CMS page. And then add the selected products to the look categories.
The idea is that a customer can select their size and add each product of the look on that page without leaving.
Is this the correct way to go about this?
Is there a better way to go about it?
I think the best way to do this would be to create your own module in app/local.
Also you should take a look at configurable products and their attributes, maybe that's enough for what you want.
The solution was to greater utilise the category function of magento.
I built two new themes within my template file one for category and one for product list.
The category structure I used was
SHOP THIS LOOK > LOOK 1
> LOOK 2
> LOOK 3
The template that was applied to the 'Shop This Look' parent category had all product list snippets removed and only displayed the images of the sub categories (Look 1, Look 2 and Look 3).
I then added the look image to each of the Look 1 - Look 3 categories and the products (via the category products tab).
The Look pages also had their own list.phtml file. That displayed the category (look) image on the left hand side, then a list of the products down the right hand side. I edited it so the product images / titles didn't link through to the product any more and added a 'View full product details' link at the bottom. This encourages people to add their products to the page from the look and remain on the page to add the rest of the look.
Another good way to look into buying a whole look as opposed to selecting individual options is bundled products.
Over all functionality is exactly how I wanted it. Updating is easy for a Magento layman and it looks great.
as an alternative approach you can check Altima Lookbook to create "Shop the look" experience.
It does it in a bit different way - allows you to place a slide (as part of slideshow) with multiple products linked with that slides as interactive tags, placed on top of actual image.

How to Retrieve Magento Core Variables in CMS Blocks or Pages?

Changing templates isn't an option in my situation and even so if I make a full HTML page with just two integrated "product blocks: (product name, product image, product price, buy me)", it seems easier to just call the two products you need and insert them directly.
So I'm curious to know if I can retrieve Magento {{variables}} such as product names, images, prices,... . I'm perfectly happy to use Magento Custom Variables to create functions to retrieve these, but I have no idea as to where to start. Any ideas would be appreciated.
As far as I know, it's not possible, nor is it sensible, to do this all from the CMS page.
You're best bet would be to create a widget. Widgets are reusable template tags that are very similar to the blocks used in the Magento layout system.
Once your widget is made, you can then call the widget in the CMS page with a product option, {{widget type="mywidgets/productname" product_id="1"}}, and modify the widget's output based on the product id entered.
The tutorial I've linked to is very good, and should be a great starting point.

Magento: Fastest way to hide empty categories in Magento frontend?

What I'm trying to do seems trivial but I've been looking on Google for this for the past 3 hours and can't find it...
--> I'm just trying to list the categories of my website but hide those that are empty AND that all their subcategories are also empty (no products).
Shouldn't that be easy to do?? Everything I've found seems utterly complicated or custom-coded. Am I the only one that doesn't want to show empty categories?
Note: I'm using Magento 1.3.2.4, I don't want to manually hide categories in backend.
There is an article about that from Pratski :
Display Only If There Are Products In The Category

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