MyCubeCart.com » CubeCart 3 and CubeCart 4 Tutorials

CubeCart Pagination and SE Friendly URLs

Ron Edgecomb II — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:48:43 +0000

In working with CubeCart 4.3 this evening, I’ve discovered a small bug which affects pagination links generated by CubeCart. If you have your store configured to use search engine friendly URLs, the pagination links will not reflect the desired search engine structure. The standard query based URL is displayed instead.

This bug is explained in detail below, you are welcome to skip ahead to the fix.

What is pagination?

For the web, pagination refers to the process of taking your content and splitting it up into separate pages. Pagination is typically reserved for large pieces of content.

For example, if you have a 1000 word article, you may wish to split it up over 4 pages limiting each page to 250 words. In the case of CubeCart, pagination is used to split up the content within the category view of products, search results and product reviews.

Here is an example of how the pagination in CubeCart may be displayed:

What does the pagination bug do?

The pagination bug I’ve discovered will only affected CubeCart 4 stores which have search engine friendly URLs enabled. All pagination links generated by CubeCart will contain URLs which are not “clean”.

Fore example, with search engine friendly URLs enabled, you would anticipate pagination links to look something like this:

http://mycubecart.com/shop/category-description/cat_1.html?page=1

What you get looks more like this:

http://mycubecart.com/shop/index.php?_a=viewCat&catId=1&page=1

As you can see from the example, the search engine friendly urls are much cleaner and easier for the user to understand.

The good news is this bug does not prevent your store from being used.

The Pagination Bug Fix

This bug was discovered in version 4.3.0 but appears to be present on all versions of CubeCart from 4.0.x – 4.3.0.

The bug fix outlined below references line numbers from CubeCart version 4.3.0. Though the line number may differ from older versions, it appears the fix is identical.

This bug requires the alteration of the following CubeCart 4 files:

cubecart root/includes/functions.inc.php

Part 1 – All Version CubeCart 4.0.x – 4.3.0

1. Open functions.inc.php

2. Find:

386	global $lang;

3. Replace with:

// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com
    global $lang, $config;
/* Replaced
    global $lang;
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com

4. Find:

410	$currentPage = sanitizeVar($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

5. Replace with:

// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod
    if($config['sef']) {
        $currentPage = sanitizeVar($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
    } else {
        $currentPage = sanitizeVar($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);    
    }
/* Replaced
    $currentPage = sanitizeVar($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod

6. Save file and upload.

Bug Fix Complete!

After saving your updated functions.inc.php file and uploading to your sever, all pagination results will be formated to the desired search engine friendly parameters.

Google Checkout Button Background Color

Ron Edgecomb II — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:56:52 +0000

CubeCart 4 gives you the ability out of the box to allow your store to accept payments through Google Checkout. This is a great feature and one currently used here at MyCubeCart.com.

A small issued surfaced with the recent redesign of MyCubeCart.com. The Gooogle Checkout button had a white background, my content area did not. The button looked out of place and I was pressed to find a solution. The Google Checkout API offers a handful of button customization options, a transparent background was one of them.

After digging around in the code a bit, I was pleasantly surprised to see that CubeCart was for the most part aligned to receive the type of customization I was after. A few small updates later, I had my transparent button.

Here’s how I did it.

This modification requires the alteration of the following CubeCart 4 files:

cubecart root/modules/altCheckout/Google_Checkout/admin/index.inc.php
cubecart root/modules/altCheckout/Google_Checkout/button.php

Part 1 – All Versions CubeCart 4.2.x – 4.3.0

1. Open index.inc.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find:

93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102
Button size:

3. Add immediately after:

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113
Button Background Color:

4. Save file and upload.

Part 2 – All Versions CubeCart 4.2.x – 4.3.0

1. Open button.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find (line 167 or 168, determined by version):

168	return $cart->CheckoutButtonCode($module['size']);

3. Replace with:

// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod
            return $cart-&gt;CheckoutButtonCode($module['size'], $module['bgcolor']);
/* Replaced
            return $cart->CheckoutButtonCode($module['size']);
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod

4. Save file and upload.

Modification Complete!

To use this feature, login to your CubeCart 4 control panel. Under the Modules heading, click on Alternate Checkouts. From here you will click the configure link next to the Google Checkout logo.

You will see a list of options for configuring this module. You will now have a dropdown menu in place to select the background color of your Google Checkout button!

Please note, the Google Checkout API only permits white and transparent as valid options for the button background color. Do not attempt to expand the color selection beyond what is provided in the tutorial, all attempts will fail to render a button in your stores frontend.

Clean(er) CubeCart 4 URLs

Ron Edgecomb II — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:33:25 +0000

This modification may not function properly if you have selected “Use FTP generated PHP pages (If all other methods fail)” as the URL Build Option in your CubeCart settings.

If you are using CubeCart version 4 there is a fairly good chance you are making use of the search engine friendly URL features. This will replace a “dirty”, query laced URL with a much cleaner search engine and user friendly URL modeled off of traditional static page URLs.

In making the URL clean, a .html extenstion is added to the end of the URL. For users like me, it’s not quite clean enough.

By leaning on WordPress in many of my web development projects, I’ve grown accustom to having my URLs end with no file extension, just a slash (eg. mycubecart.com/some/friendly/url/). This is what we aim to accomplish here.

This modification requires the alteration of the following CubeCart 4 files:

cubecart root/index.php
cubecart root/includes/sef_urls.inc.php

Part 1 – CubeCart Version 4.3.0 Only

1. Open index.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find:

53	if(preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {

3. Replace with:

// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls
	if(preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(/)?(?.*)?(/)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {
/* Replaced
	if(preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls

4. Save file and upload.

Part 1 – CubeCart Version 4.2.x

1. Open index.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find:

53	preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches);

3. Replace with:

// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls
	preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?(/)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches);
/* Replaced
	preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches);
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls

4. Save file and upload.

Part 2 – All Version CubeCart 4.2.x – 4.3.0

Line numbers below are based on that of 4.3.0. The replacements demonstated are consistent but the line numbers will vary based on the actual version of CubeCart 4 you are using.

1. Open sef_urls.inc.php.

2. Find (5 occurrences – lines: 86, 121, 147, 158 and 168):

86	$ext = ($config['sefserverconfig'] == 3) ? '.php' : '.html';

3. Replace each occurrence with:

// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls
	$ext = '/';
/* Replaced
	$ext	= ($config['sefserverconfig'] == 3) ? '.php' : '.html';
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls

4. Save file and upload.

Modification Complete!

Now your CubeCart URL’s will be so clean, the glare may hurt your visitors eyes!