ePages General Questions, Please Help

[Spency]

Hi All,

I have just taken over the website for a company called Office Recycling Bin.

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk

Having never used ePages before, I am find some aspects of it really frustrating / difficult / hard to get.

1 ) We have Short URLs turned on, but the URL is still displayed as :

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/epages/11117.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/11117/Categories/DeskTopTray

We can we not have the URL displayed as :

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/recycling-office-bins

Like other carts I have used, OSCommerce etc?

I was told on your phone support this is not possible, but I find that hard to beleive, from an SEO point of view its worthless if thats the case.

2 ) Because of this, the SiteMap.xml will not be as we want it to be, will it?

3 ) How do I insert Google Analytics into the site?

Please can you help, as I feel I have just wasted hours trying to find answers or solutions to these issues.

[Spency]

Also when you land on the home page, why does the url have :

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/epages/11117.sf

Why does it need epages and the 11117 in there?

[Spency]

Also, how can I upload the verfication files for the various Webmaster controls, as there is no mention of the FTP details for this site in the BT Account panel?

[whoknows · Accepted solution]

Hi Spency,

Will share my experience when i started with ePages about 2 months ago around the areas you mention.

1. Short URL.  It will not disply teh short url in the address bar - period.  We use the short URL's to point people to appropriate pages on our website, or we tell people the short url and it lands them on teh right page, albeit the address bar will display the long address!  We have started to live with it - not ideal, but we pressed on with other challenges.
2. Sitemap - no the site map will not have the the short URLs.
3. Google Analytics.  We basically copied the Google Analytic HTML code and paste it at the bottom of each page.  However, this needs to be done a particular way.  If you are in Preview of a page and you click and highlight the last Text area you see on the pageyou will see "edit HTML" option in the EDIT box (in between the FILE and FONT options boxes).  Click on edit HTML and it open the HTML for the text box....go to the bottom and paste the Google Code.
4. Google Analytics 2.  if you are on a page such as Promotional Products which just list products, then from teh Preview mode click Datasheet View (which will be in the box marked Commands) this will open up the Datasheet.  All we did was then paste the Analytics code into the Long Description box.  Do NOT open the box by clicking EDIT TEXT button, just paste it into the box - if you SAVE and then click on EDIT TEXT button, you will find there is nothing in the box - tis purely to enter text (without having to code the HTML tags etc.)

Obvioulsy you need to do this on every page!

Not sure what you mean about verification code.  We had to verifiy the site with GoogleBase and all we did was copy the verification code and, once again, paste it into the box under  SETTINGS>>GENERAL SETTINGS>>ADVANCED SETTING>HTML Head area box.  Seemed to work...once verified we removed it.

Anyhow, hope the above helps.

[whoknows]

The actual site is hosted by ePages - not BT!  I assume their naming structure in their system alloes for the pre-cursor domain names, but then need top allocate a "ePages" identifier for your account  - hence /ePages/11117.sf

Just my thought!

[orchie]

For Google Webmaster tools choose the meta tag option, then in your shop admin go to 'settings' > 'general settings' > 'advanced settings' and paste the <verify-v1> code in the box there.

[Spency]

Hi All,

And thanks for your help.

I have tried to verfiy the site, but I am getting this from Google :

Last attempt Oct 9, 2009: We've detected that your site's home page returns a status of 404 in the header.

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/epages/11117.sf

It is there, in the file, so I am not sure why its doing this?

So then I thought I would try verifying :

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/epages/

And now I get : 

Last attempt Oct 9, 2009: We've detected that your site's home page returns a status of 403 in the header.

Any ideas?

[eShopTeam]

Hello Spency,

It may have to do with wrong or old dns entries. We have checked several dns server via nslookup, there are 2 ip addresses appearing. Could it be that you had redirected your domain from 98.124.199.1 to 195.179.67.178 to your eshop at first? (btowstore.com). The ip address 98.124.199.1 is not reachable anymore. Most of the dns server had the new ip address 195.179.67.178 refreshed, but google dns server requests seemed to had found still old dns-entries.

Your domain should point to this ip address 195.179.67.178 . It will take a while (mostly 48h) until all dns servers are updated. Do not switch ip addresses back and forward, this will only extend the time the dns server needs to refresh their entries. Check your entry if they are correct, just leave it. If not change it once and then you have to wait, till changes takes affect.

To come back to short urls. The base thinking of short urls are to give a oppurtinity to present external links better.

Instead of showing on external sites like this:

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/epages/11117.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/11117/Products/%22402573%20x%201%20%28%C2%A323.00%20per%20pack%20of%2050%29%22

you can use now this link: (as tipp, keep those short and understandable)

http://www.officerecyclingbin.co.uk/Recycling-Bin-Liners-Clear-See-ThruBin-Liners-1-Pack-of-50

Now the good thing here is, google, yahoo and microsoft are indexing these short links automatically, so people starts searching on google, yahoo or microsoft for expample "Recycle Bin Liners" gets now hits on your eshop, which shows your short links.

[morteza123]

I have exactly the same problem but hang on the IP address you jus typed in as 195.179.67.178 is my domain IP address as for www.grink.co.uk  how could this be possible ?

I am so frastrated by how BT is acting so unprofessional I had this problem since I started and I am not happy at all , search engines they cant find my url I have registered with all of them including google , yahoo , bing , ...

I have managed to verify my sight with google but that was all its not showing up on google even when I type in the full url www.grink.co.uk ,I have spoken to BT web technicians and epages many times they cant fix it they keep telling me its all fine ,I know there is something absolutly wrong may be the dns settings but cant access it I have computer science back ground and I know what am talking about. is there any one who can realy help??