Hi everybody,
I've been running my current site on a heavily modified version of ECT v5.9.3 and a robust version of PHP 5.3 for over 12 years now but I am now in the process of transferring to the latest version of ECT 7.8.0 on PHP 8 but I have run into a problem when trying to serve all the category and product pages as static URL's.
This wasn't possible in 5.9.3 without the Complete Ecommerce Templates Shopping Cart SEO Add-On which used the script below in the .htaccess file to rewrite the URL's that were stored in extra columns added added to the product and sections tables in the database.

RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*)$ /handle_url.php [L]

ECT 7.8.0 already has the table columns for the static URL's (sectionurl for sections table and PStaticURL for products table) so I assumed that the latest version would be able to serve static category and product pages "out of the box" but when I insert a static URL into these columns (eg. /epsonxp2200.php) I get a 404 error until I remove the data which reverts the system back to serving its dynamic page URL's.

It's most important that the category and product pages are served with static URL's so that I can match them to the current website and keep the pages listed in Google without having to manually write literally thousands of 301 redirects in the .htacces file.

Could somebody please tell me if I am correct in assuming that I should be able to serve all my category and product pages as static URL's on ECT version 7.8.0 or am I missing something?

Hi,, if you insert url's into those columns, then those pages must exist, or you get the 404.
I think you want this instead - https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/seo/search-engine-friendly-urls-php.asp

David

Thanks David,
I've managed to rewrite the old Complete Ecommerce Templates Shopping Cart SEO Add-On which now works with ECT 7.8.0 and is serving dynamic pages with the static URLs stored in the product and sections database tables.