[Solved] Product creation

[Essex Dog Supplies]

I'm very new to PrestaShop and I'm learning things slowly. I am now trying to add products and have filled out the page with pricing image etc etc. WHen I try viewing the product page it doesn't display.

The SEO link address is:
http://www.essexdogsupplies.co.uk/id_product-kong-classic.html

and error - 404 not found

The actual address when you click on the product in the category is:
http://www.essexdogsupplies.co.uk/product/6

and error - this page isn't redirecting properly.

Please can someone help/explain. Thank you!

[bellini13]

Do you have friendly names enabled? Check in the Back Office -> Preferences -> SEO & URLs section.

[Essex Dog Supplies]

Yes I have tried doing this but then I cannot access any of the website, not even the homepage. It changes the homepage to www.domain.co.uk/en and when you enable friendly url I get this:

If you turn on this feature, you must generate a .htaccess file

Not really sure what this is or why. I do have some technical ability but not loads.

[bellini13]

.htaccess is a file that enables the 'under the covers' operations for SEO. You can generate the .htaccess file from the Back Office -> Tools -> Generators section.

You really only need to enable friendly URL's, not Canonical. Canonical is adding the /en and your theme has to support it. It really is not necessary.

[Essex Dog Supplies]

Thank you for your patience with this. So I've enabled friendly URLs and disabled Canonical. I try to generate the .htaccess file but I now get this error:

Cannot write into file: C:\vhosts\essexdogsupplies.co.uk\httpdocs\admin_eds\tabs/../../.htaccess
Please check write permissions.

[bellini13]

Ok good making progress. Now you need to create a file called .htaccess in your prestashops main folder, and give it write permmissions. You can generally do this from your hosts cpanel.

[Essex Dog Supplies]

I host my domain with a friend so they have access tot his but I don't so I'll get him to do this step.

[Essex Dog Supplies]

My mate seems to think that .htaccess will not work on a windows server. Any ideas. he has told me to turn of SEO but know how to do this either.

[bellini13]

Ah, so assuming you're being hosted on an IIS server as opposed to apache, then I agree. There are other ways to to get IIS to do URL rewrites, so if you want to use SEO then your friend will need to manage those re-write settings for you.

[mdj1]

Hi All

Dan's mate here. I finally got this working. I tried all sorts, following example on here etc etc but with no avail.

I will list below what I did to get this working in the hope that it helps someone else.

Dan's site is running on Windows 2008 IIS7 which has a built in re-write engine.

Firstly you need to generate the .htaccess file but PS wont let you do this. So you need to create a blank one in your sites root directory first. NOW Windows won't let you create a .htaccess file so create a new text file calle .htaccess. when you save the file it will remove the trailing . HOW COOL IS THAT!

Once you've created the file, click on the generate button for the SEO in PS Admin. This will then fill the file with the info you need. Just creating the file won't make everything work.

You then need to open up IIS, navigate to the website and click on the re-write icon. Click browse on the import section at the top and navigate to your newly filled out .htaccess file. IIS will then import all the info it needs. Click on Update and then click on the website name again from the list on the left. You should see a "restart" button on the right side of the page. Click it and your SEO URL's should now be working!

[bellini13]

Good news, thanks for coming back and reporting on your success.

[Essex Dog Supplies]

Thanks alot.