Seekmodo for Zen Cart

Overview

The Seekmodo connector routes your Zen Cart storefront's product search, indexer cron, click beacon, and type-ahead autocomplete through the Seekmodo platform at mcp.seekmodo.com, while keeping native Zen Cart search permanently armed as a graceful fallback.

What the plugin swaps

• Storefront search — routes product search through the Seekmodo gateway with native LIKE fallback.
• Indexer cron — bulk catalog upserts to Seekmodo, auto-chunked at 500 documents per request.
• Click beacon — mirrors search and product-click events for analytics and LTR attribution.
• Type-ahead — prefix-tuned autocomplete with commerce-aware scoring.

Requirements

Operating modes

Installation

This guide assumes you have a Seekmodo subscription, Zen Cart 1.5.8+, and admin access to your store.

Recommended PHP extensions

The connector self-checks your PHP environment on Tools → Connect to Seekmodo (Diagnostics panel). None are install-time gates, but each matters for steady-state behaviour.

php -v                                # need >= 7.4
php -m | grep -E 'sodium|apcu|opcache|curl|openssl|mysqli|intl'

Download and verify

Always download the signed zip from seekmodo.com. Replace the version in the commands below with your target release.

curl -fLO https://seekmodo.com/plugins/seekmodo-zen-cart-{{VERSION}}.zip
curl -fLO https://seekmodo.com/plugins/seekmodo-zen-cart-{{VERSION}}.zip.sha256
sha256sum -c seekmodo-zen-cart-{{VERSION}}.zip.sha256
# expected: seekmodo-zen-cart-{{VERSION}}.zip: OK

Install through Plugin Manager

1. Open Zen Cart admin

   Log in to your admin panel (/admin or your renamed path).

2. Upload the plugin

   Go to Tools → Plugin Manager → Upload New Plugin and select the downloaded zip.

3. Install Seekmodo

   Find the row labelled Seekmodo and click Install. The Scripted Installer creates the configuration group and seeds 13 NUMINIX_SEEKMODO_* rows with safe defaults (MODE=off).

4. Confirm installation

   The Plugin Manager row should read Seekmodo v1.3.31 — Installed.

Pair with your Seekmodo tenant

1. Open Connect to Seekmodo

   In Zen Cart admin, go to Tools → Connect to Seekmodo.

2. Start pairing

   Click Connect. You are redirected to seekmodo.com/connect with a one-time token.

3. Approve the tenant

   Sign in to seekmodo.com, pick the tenant to bind, and approve.

4. Verify pairing

   On success, the plugin populates your tenant ID and HMAC secret. The page shows a green Paired banner.

Activate Seekmodo

Open admin.seekmodo.com, find your tenant, and switch Mode from Disabled to Learning or Active. The connector polls the gateway every 5 minutes; within that window your storefront starts using Seekmodo.

Verify installation

1. Plugin Manager — row reads Seekmodo v1.3.31 — Installed.
2. Storefront search — search for a known product; tail <docroot>/logs/numinix_seekmodo.log and look for backend=gateway.
3. Admin analytics — sign in to admin.seekmodo.com → Analytics → Top queries and confirm your test search appears.

Configuration

Most settings are managed remotely from admin.seekmodo.com and pulled into your store via tenant.snapshot every 5 minutes. You rarely need to change local constants by hand.

Connection (local)

Mode and performance (gateway-authoritative)

Full configuration reference on seekmodo.com

Usage

After pairing and activating, the connector runs with minimal day-to-day maintenance. Policy updates from admin.seekmodo.com propagate automatically.

Search and modes

Start with Active mode on admin.seekmodo.com. The connector observes gateway health in shadow mode and auto-promotes to enforce after ~50 successful searches. On sustained failures it auto-demotes back to shadow.

Catalog indexing

The indexer runs from your existing Zen Cart cron via numinix_seekmodo_run_bulk_upsert(). Schedule is controlled by NUMINIX_SEEKMODO_INDEXER_SCHEDULE on admin.seekmodo.com (hourly, every_4h, daily, or manual).

Type-ahead and click attribution

• Type-ahead autocomplete is enabled via storefront observers — no template edits required on v1.0.9+.
• Click and impression events flow to Seekmodo for analytics and learning-to-rank.
• Shadow-mode attribution captures competitor SERP clicks (v1.1.4+).

Integration guide and swap-point details

Upgrade

The supported routine update path is the in-plugin Updates page (v1.0.7+).

1. Open Seekmodo Updates

   Go to Tools → Seekmodo Updates in Zen Cart admin.

2. Review available release

   The page pulls seekmodo.com/plugins/manifest.json, compares versions, and shows release notes.

3. Apply update

   Click Apply update. The connector downloads the signed zip, verifies SHA-256 and ed25519 signature, backs up the current version, and installs the new tree.

4. Roll back if needed

   The Updates page lists recent backups with a Roll back button (last 3 kept).

Connectors documentation — upgrade section

Troubleshooting

Common issues and quick fixes. For deeper help, see the full troubleshooting guide or contact support@seekmodo.com.

Search behaves the same after install

Normal — the plugin defaults to MODE=off. Pair the store and flip mode to Active on admin.seekmodo.com.

Connect to Seekmodo fails

• Clock skew — run date -u and compare to mcp.seekmodo.com; fix NTP.
• Missing sodium — install the PHP sodium extension; pairing cannot proceed without it.
• Outbound blocked — test curl -fsS https://mcp.seekmodo.com/v1/health from the host.
• Browser cookies — try pairing in a clean browser profile if VPN/proxy strips cookies.

Log shows backend=native

The gateway was bypassed — check mode is not off, verify APCu is loaded, and confirm outbound connectivity. Enable NUMINIX_SEEKMODO_DEBUG=true on admin.seekmodo.com for verbose logs.

Domain lock / multi-environment

Each tenant locks to one canonical storefront host. Dev/staging clones need their own tenant or a preview subdomain configured on admin.seekmodo.com.

Full troubleshooting guide

Support

Need help? Our team and documentation are available on seekmodo.com.