How To Close Your X-Cart Without Tanking SEO Ranking

[Tenakee Springs]

Tutorial detailing how to close an X-Cart store without tanking search engine ranking.


Using the "Check this to close your shop temporarily:" in your X-Cart admin -> general settings section will not allow customers to access your site effectively closing it, however this also prevents search engines from accessing your site pages and tells search engines that all pages have been directed to shop_closed.html. This can have a drastic consequence on search engine rankings.

Instead, you can prevent orders from being processed and place a shop closed message on your stores pages with the following changes. Note the location of the .tpl files may differ if you are using a custom skin. You'll want to modify the files at the locations specific to your site.

Open skin/common_files/customer/home.tpl
Find:

{include file="customer/home_main.tpl"}

Before add code providing a formatted message about the reason your store is closed:

<div style="padding: 10px; border: 1px solid #CCCCCC; background-color: #EAEAEA">
<h2>Shop Closed Temporarily</h2>
We'll be open for orders again shortly, please check back soon!
To place an order in the meantime please call 555-5555.
</div>

Open cart.php
Find:

<?php

After add:

// WCM - Temporarily disable orders
header('Location: /');
// / WCM - Temporarily disable orders

Your store will now remain spiderable while people who attempt to place orders will be redirected to the home page displaying the closed message. To restore checkout remove the message from home.tpl, and delete the code from cart.php.