WebAcappella Fusion 4.1.3: Improved Store Search Engine Optimization and Unicode Support

Version 4.1.3 of WebAcappella Fusion has been available since August 17. It’s more substantial than previous releases: five fixes and one new feature, with a significant portion dedicated to the store—and more specifically, to how Google views your products. If you sell online, this update is worth a few minutes of your time to read through, and above all, requires you to republish your site.

Store: Fixes that affect your search engine optimization

These are the most important fixes in this version because they are invisible from the editor: everything happens in the published files—the ones read by search engines and social media platforms.

The sitemap retained the old URLs for your products

After renaming a product, the published product page correctly used its new address—URL, canonical tag, social sharing, and structured data. However, the sitemap.xml file continued to list the old address and its old last-modified date. The reason: the sitemap was only regenerated when a page on the site was modified, never when only products were changed. As a result, search engines were consistently directed to URLs that no longer existed.

The sitemap is now regenerated as soon as a product, category, or store address setting changes. Incidentally, deactivated products are no longer reported to search engines: since they don’t appear in any store listings, they had no business being in the sitemap.

Incorrect URLs in Social Sharing and Structured Data

On a multilingual site, the URL declared by product pages for sharing on social media (Open Graph) and in the structured data read by Google (JSON-LD, which powers rich results) omitted the language folder: it pointed to the site’s root, where no corresponding page exists. The same applied to the preview image. In practice, a product link shared on social media might appear without a thumbnail or title, and the rich results would remain empty.

These URLs are now complete and have been stripped of the navigation anchor they were unnecessarily carrying. The site must be republished.

Redirects after renaming now use 301

Still in the store: after renaming a product or category, the old URL is now redirected permanently (301) rather than temporarily (302). This distinction is not merely cosmetic: only a 301 tells search engines that they must transfer the acquired search rankings to the new address. With a 302, they would retain the old address in their index, and the benefits of your work would remain on a ghost page.

Store: Variations Invisible When Browsing Between Products

This one was a fix on the publisher’s end. In a product listing, the “Previous Product” and “Next Product” buttons would correctly switch to a different product, but the “Product Variations” tab remained hopelessly empty whenever products had variations based on the same attribute combinations (size, color, etc.): the variations for the new product were incorrectly treated as duplicates of those for the previous product.

You then had to close the product page and reopen the product from the list to find them—a tedious process for a clothing or shoe catalog, where you spend your time navigating from product to product. Variations now display correctly.

Photo albums: a replaced image might disappear

This one was sneaky. Replacing a photo with another that had a very similar name—an accent, a space, or an extra or missing capital letter—could cause the new image to disappear: it wouldn’t display, no longer appeared in the resources, and was removed from the album upon the next publication, as if it had never been added.

Internal file name handling has been made more reliable in all relevant areas: the image is now retained regardless of its name, without having to simplify it beforehand. And if a photo is truly untraceable, or if its import fails because the file is invalid, a message clearly informs you—instead of silently removing the photo.

Boxes and Floating Lines: The Return of the Background

Since a previous update, a box or floating line would systematically move to the foreground, in front of all page content, with no option to move it back. However, a common use case is precisely to use them as fixed backgrounds, behind text.

The “Z-index” setting (Geometry tab) is now available for boxes as well; it applies to the floating element and accepts negative values that place the element behind the page content. The default behavior remains unchanged: without any specific settings, a floating box or line remains in the foreground. The site must be republished.

New: Unicode file names on the published site

Until now, the names of published files—album photos, images, documents—were systematically simplified to ASCII characters: accents were removed, and names in non-Latin scripts (Japanese, Greek, Cyrillic, etc.) were simply lost, replaced by generic names. This limitation was a holdover from a time when web hosts did not handle Unicode properly.

The new projects now preserve the original names—including accents and non-Latin scripts—in published files and their web addresses, which virtually all modern hosting providers support without issue. This is more readable for your visitors and more meaningful for search engines: chalet-été-2026.jpg is better than image_042.jpg.

What You Need to Do

1. Update WebAcappella Fusion to version 4.1.3 (using the built-in update, or by restarting the editor if the update wasn’t offered).
2. Republish your site: this is essential for the sitemap, social sharing links, structured data, 301 redirects, and the Z-index of floating elements.
3. If you’re starting a new project with accented characters or non-Latin script, check the Generation section of the project settings.

In summary

• The store sitemap is regenerated as soon as a product or category changes, and no longer lists deactivated products.
• The social sharing and structured data links for product pages are finally correct on multilingual sites.
• Renaming products and categories now generates 301 redirects, which preserve the existing search engine rankings.
• Variations display correctly when navigating from one product to another from the product page.
• A photo replaced in an album no longer disappears, regardless of its file name.
• The Z-index is restored for boxes and floating elements—including those with negative values—to move them back into the background.
• Unicode filenames are preserved when publishing to new projects.

This update may seem minor at first glance, but it fixes several issues where your SEO efforts were quietly going down the drain without any warning. If you have an online store, don’t wait to republish.