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SEO-friendly URLs in X-Cart 5.6.x

Learn how clean URLs are structured in X-Cart 5.6.x and what changed compared to earlier versions.

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Written by Anna Verbichenko

This article applies to X-Cart 5.6.x. If your store runs X-Cart 5.5.1.x or 5.4.x, see Tweaking SEO-Friendly URLs in X-Cart 5.4.x instead.

X-Cart 5.6.x uses one fixed, predictable structure for clean URLs: every type of page gets its own prefix, and the page’s own clean URL follows it. Clean URLs are always on — there’s no switch to enable or disable them, and there are no URL format settings to configure.

URL structure

Page type

URL

Example

Product

/product/{clean-url}

https://example.com/product/ams-front-mount-intercooler

Category

/category/{clean-url}

https://example.com/category/intercoolers

Brand (Shop by Brand add-on)

/brand/{clean-url}

https://example.com/brand/niche

Vehicle make (Make/Model/Year add-on)

/auto/{clean-url}

https://example.com/auto/ford

Content page

/page/{clean-url}

https://example.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Customer gallery entry (Customer Gallery add-on)

/customer-galleries/{clean-url}

https://example.com/customer-galleries/glossy-grey-f-150

Special storefront pages keep short fixed addresses without a prefix, for example /contact-us, /bestsellers, /newarrivals, /coming-soon, /sale-products, /all-brands, /shop-by-make, /customer-gallery, /news.

A few things to note:

  • Category URLs are flat. A subcategory’s URL doesn’t include its parent categories: the “Intercoolers” subcategory of “Cooling systems” is /category/intercoolers, not /category/cooling-systems/intercoolers.

  • No .html and no trailing slash. URLs end with the clean URL itself.

  • Clean URLs are unique across the store for each page type. If you create a second category named “Oils”, X-Cart generates oils-1 for it automatically. In the Admin area, X-Cart also warns you if you enter a clean URL that’s already in use.

  • Language prefix. If your store has more than one language enabled, pages in a non-default language get the language code before the whole path — for example, /de/product/{clean-url}.

Editing a page’s clean URL

The prefix (/product/, /category/, and so on) is set by X-Cart and its add-ons and can’t be changed from the Admin area. What you control is the part after the prefix — the page’s own clean URL.

  1. Open the product, category, brand, or content page in the Admin area.

  2. Find the Clean URL field. By default, Autogenerate Clean URL is enabled, and X-Cart builds the clean URL from the page’s name whenever you save.

  3. To set your own value, disable Autogenerate Clean URL and edit the Clean URL field directly. The Result line below the field shows the full address the page will have, prefix included.

  4. Save the page (for a product, click Update product).

For details on the product page fields, see Product details (X-Cart 5.6.x).

What happens to old URLs after an upgrade

If your store was upgraded from X-Cart 5.5.1.x or earlier, links to your pages in search engines, bookmarks, and external sites still use the previous URL structure. X-Cart 5.6.x handles most of them for you with permanent (301) redirects:

  • Old product URLs without the prefix, such as /ams-front-mount-intercooler, redirect to /product/ams-front-mount-intercooler.

  • Old nested category URLs, such as /cooling-systems/intercoolers/, redirect to /category/intercoolers.

  • Old brand, vehicle make, and content page URLs redirect to their prefixed equivalents the same way.

  • URLs with a trailing slash or with different letter case redirect to the canonical form.

  • Dynamic URLs, such as ?target=product&product_id=31, redirect to the clean URL.

One kind of URL is not redirected: addresses ending in .html, which older X-Cart versions could generate when the .html URL format was selected. A request like /ams-front-mount-intercooler.html returns a 404 page. If your store used .html URLs before the upgrade, set up redirects for them on your web server, or ask our support team for help.

Settings from earlier versions that no longer apply

  • Enable clean URL toggle — removed in X-Cart 5.5. Clean URLs are always enabled.

  • Clean URL formats (domain/parent/goalcategory/, domain/goalproduct.html, and the other formats described in Tweaking SEO-Friendly URLs in X-Cart 5.4.x) — deprecated in X-Cart 5.6. They have no effect; the structure described above is used regardless of these settings.

  • Short product URLs in product lists (the option added in X-Cart 5.5.1.56) — deprecated in X-Cart 5.6, since all product URLs are already short.

The server requirements for clean URLs (URL rewriting on Apache or Nginx) are unchanged — see SEO-Friendly URLs: Server Setup & Troubleshooting.

FAQ

Q: Can I remove the /product/ and /category/ prefixes?

A: No. The prefixes are part of the URL structure in X-Cart 5.6.x and can’t be turned off from the Admin area.

Q: Can I include the parent category in a subcategory’s URL?

A: No. Category URLs are flat in X-Cart 5.6.x. If two categories in different branches have the same name, X-Cart keeps their URLs unique by adding a number to one of them (for example, oils and oils-1), or you can set different clean URLs manually.

Q: Do I need to change anything in robots.txt after upgrading?

A: Only if you have manual rules that reference old URL paths — review them against the structure above.

Can't find answers you're looking for?

Email us at support@x-cart.com. We will be happy to help!

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