<tip c n>NOTE: The SEO addon requires use of "Apache rewrite module" or "mod_rewrite". Without this server capability installed, enabled, and working properly for your server, the SEO addon will not be able to do it's job.</tip>

The SEO addon comes included with the GeoCore software. Below are instructions for installation and initial configuration.

1. A "SEO Addon" Install option will appear under the following admin management tool:

ADDONS > MANAGE ADDONS

1. If you are ready to continue with the installation of this addon click the "install" link next to the SEO addon in the uninstalled addons section of the above admin tool. Once the SEO addon installation script is run the database now contains the necessary database entries for the SEO addon to work.
2. The next step is to click the "enable" link next to the SEO addon in the "enabled" section of the above admin tool. Make sure you are able to immediately continue to the next stage of the installation process BEFORE you click on the "enable" link. Once the "enable" link is clicked the addon at that point is "live" and rewriting/redirecting on the client side. The problem is that you do not have an .htaccess file on your site to provide the rules for the server to rewrite/redirect within your site. Thus the category listing details links on the client are "broken" until you have an .htaccess file properly in place to provide the server those rules. After the SEO addon is enabled you will see an "SEO" option in your ADDONS admin tool. Now you have the ability to move on to the next stage of installation.

1. In your admin, go to Addons > SEO > General Settings. This will start up a "first time SEO installation wizard". Proceed through ALL of the steps in the wizard, and be sure to read and follow each step carefully. Failure to complete ALL steps of the wizard may break the linking in your site because the SEO addon may be on but not fully installed. Also note that one of the steps in the SEO wizard is to verify you see a valid page as if you were browsing the client side using the SEO addon. If the SEO url rewriting is working you will see a page in the test but it may not be formatted with CSS. This is fine as the test was just to make sure you didn't see a server 404 error page.
2. The above wizard provides the contents of the .htaccess file needed for the SEO addon to properly rewrite/redirect browsers on the client side. If you don't have an .htaccess file in the base directory of your Geo installation directory you will need to create one and put the suggested contents from the SEO wizard into it. You can usually do this through an ftp program or your hosting panel's file management program if your host provides one in their hosting control panel. How your ftp program or file management program works is a question for your ftp programs documentation or site hosting's file management documentation. You may not be able to create a file named ".htaccess" locally on your computer as Windows may not allow you to save a file without an extension or such an extension as this. But you can create an "htaccess.txt" file locally and then upload it to your site using an ftp program/site hosting file management tool and then using those same files rename that file to ".htaccess". Note this .htaccess file will need to be in the base installation directory of your Geo installation. Within the same directory as the Geo config.php file.
3. Installation is now complete. You can now continue with the SEO's Settings for further instructions on how to customize how the URL's are re-written.

<tip c n> If you are using Windows IIS the above rules will not work directly. They will need to be imported by IIS. Let IIS import the htaccess file. It will create web.config if one is not there already. Save the changes. The site will produce an error. In the web.config, search for:

/"

and replace it with:

\"

in multiple locations. Save it. The URL rewrite works.

Note that you will need to redo this each time the rules need to be rewritten like with url changes, some version updates, …etd </tip>

From time to time you will need to recreate the contents of the .htaccess so that the rules are updated to match changes in the feature. This can happen most if instructed to within a version update, if you change the SEO url configuration or possibly if you were using the SEO addon before configuring the storefront addon and using the SEO feature in it. Or you could have removed or overwritten your current .htaccess file with another file.

It's still as easy as the installation of the htaccess rules but all the more easier now that you have done it at least once before. The first step to recreating the rules to populate the htaccess file with is to click the following button in the admin tool:

ADDONS > SEO > GENERAL SETTINGS > APPLY ALL SETTINGS

And then click the "yes" button below that. You will then be given the contents to paste into the .htaccess file you have now OVER the current Geo rewrite rules in that file. You must have only one copy of the Geo rewrite rules within that file. Once pasted into the .htaccess file you can reupload it to your site and test.

Make sure the following setting is checked to turn on the feature afterwards:

ADDONS > SEO > GENERAL SETTINGS > Re-Write URLS