Updates to your theme

05 January 2024
Intended audience: store owner, web developer

We've added some new SEO features to your FoodCommerce online shop to help people find you more easily, URL slugs and redirects to help your marketing, and for that customer who wants to be forgotten a delete customer page.

New SEO tab on products

Page title and meta description

On products, categories and producers there is a new SEO tab where you can add the page title and meta description. These fields are optional and if you leave them blank the name and description from the product, category or producers wil be used instead.

The title is always required in an HTML page and will show in the browser's title bar or in the page's tab. It may also be displayed in search results by Google and other search engines.

The meta description is not required, however it is often good to have one. It may be used by Google and others in their search results.

You cannot force Google to use your title and meta description. What you are doing is helping Google to understand your page better and hopefully they will display what you see as important in their listing. A good title and meta description helps encourage people to click on your listing and go to your website.

URL Slugs and Redirects

These solve the problem of gobbledygook in your URL especially when you need to put one on your marketing literature.

The URL slug will change the URL for your product, category or producer so your shoppers never see the gobbledygook in their browser again. In most cases this URL will be perfect to put on your marketing literature.

Redirects basically send you elsewhere. A typical use would be a URL that reflects your marketing campaign or the magazine you are advertising in. You can redirect to a:

  • Product
  • Category
  • Producer
  • Another URL

List of redirects in your theme

Individual redirect setting

A customer's right to be forgotten

Customers can now do this for themselves, a new 'core' page has been added to your online store named '/account/delete/' and a discreet link to it added to the '/account/personaldetails/' page.

A customer can still be deleted by you in the control panel.

Because you also have an obligation to keep records for tax purposes a customer account with an order history cannot be fully deleted. Instead it will be disabled and wiped of all personal information.

Please note: all the above changes have only been made in your current theme. Older themes and themes in development have not been updated.

Tony Fear
Tony Fear