Re: Joomla 1.5 and SEO improvements discussion.

Atropos · Post by **Atropos** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:16 am

Well,

Honestly I think those DRAFTS you made cover the main issues people have with Joomla and SEO. If those changes were implemented it would improve Joomla's SEO capabilities 1000%.

I understand you need more clear, concise input from other community members but I personally feel like you covered all the issues I have with Joomla and SEO in those DRAFTS.

Keep up the good work.

vavroom · Post by **vavroom** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:22 am

Thanks Atropos. I also feel the issues have been outlined properly, but next, it's a question of fleshing out each request so there is no way that anyone could decide one of them isn't important. In other words, the final proposal has to be so solid that no one can breach it

Hopefully, we'll get it done

Zorro · Post by **Zorro** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:00 am

vavroom wrote: DRAFT
Suggestion Summary
Generate “human friendly” URLs

[...]

How other systems handle this

Drupal: http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/path and http://drupal.org/node/15365
ModX: couldn't find any online docs for SEF URLs at http://modxcms.com but it's a fork of Etomite which has some basic user information here: http://www.etomite.org/wiki/EtomiteDocu ... RLs?v=1d3q
CMS Made Simple: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/moduleinte ... eturnid=63
BlogCMS: http://blogcms.com/admin/documentation/ ... -fancyurls

I'm afraid I can't contribute any more than a user's point of view on these since I'm not a developer.

Kind regards,
Zorro

gram · Post by **gram** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:16 pm

On a Core SiteMap....

I have given this a lot of thought. Joomla lacks any centrally organized, and thus centrally accessible index of its content (all - core and 3pd). If it had one, many of the suggestions put forth in this thread would be do-able.

For example, an index that would track each item and be updated by the various core admin components and give a similiar option to 3pds that want to include thier own content (each compont would be assigned a context).

Example:
Index1- Context (by component) indexes held in common place
|-Context entries, sets governing component and db table reference
|-Context-node (A category/section type entry, meta content, title, controlling component reference, sef link, reference to children(leaves or nodes), table reference, id in table). Child references not limited to its own context. A node in categories could have children in content.
|-Context-leaf (A page entry, same as above- but no children)

Index2- Heriarchal reference to Index1
|-Root (contains references to its children)
|-(Menu Context)Childnode (reference to a menu node in Index1)
|-Referenced Menu Item(Child of menuitem)
|-(if applicable, recursively)continuing children until chain exhausted

This is not all, its REAL deep, but works. End result would be to provide a basic function that could be called from anywhere, ie:
josGetIndex2 (start nodes = array('root', 'othernode', 'othernode')) {
return Index_array/s; // An array of references to Index1
}

josFindIndex1ref ($context, $id, $property) {
$return = Index1->$context->$id->$property;
return $return;
}

These or really oversimplified, just here for purposes of discussion.

GRAM

Atropos · Post by **Atropos** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:20 pm

[deleted]

I will PM about this, don't want to debate on this thread.

vavroom · Post by **vavroom** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:07 pm

@zorro, thanks for the feedback. Is there anyway you could give us a "readers digest" of those links? I'm trying NOT to have to read everything about all the CMS out there, really running out of time. A user's perspective is *fine*, we just want to know what the other systems are doing, not *how*

@gram, not being a code jockey, I don't know if what you suggest is possible or not. In any case, at this point, I'm more concerned about the "what" and "why" than the "how". Let's make sure we get a list of what is needed, then find solutions for them

Thanks both for the feedback.

gram · Post by **gram** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:19 pm

My apologies Nic. I thought that was what you were looking for.

FWIW.. That type of centralized index could be used to address a lot (SEO,SEF,SiteMap) of the suggestions presented here.

GRAM

absalom · Post by **absalom** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:07 am

More on this..

I adore the way Wordpress (WP) does permalink SEF goodness:
i.e.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

Not only does it give users the freedom to customise SEF, it means they can generate URLs in a fairly simplified format. Enter a rule format and the SEF will manage the rest for you.

This means better functionality, and if we had something similar for J! perhaps we might be able to get stable permalinks / trackbacks / pingbacks then..

Edit: get the URI right

vavroom · Post by **vavroom** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 5:43 am

Yes absalom, this is nice.

I think we have to be careful also to look at permalink in terms of on one's own site, rather than some of the trackback links that are used to submit stuff to other sites...

Zorro · Post by **Zorro** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 12:31 pm

vavroom wrote: @zorro, thanks for the feedback. Is there anyway you could give us a "readers digest" of those links? I'm trying NOT to have to read everything about all the CMS out there, really running out of time. A user's perspective is *fine*, we just want to know what the other systems are doing, not *how*

Sure, I'll write something up for you during the next few days when i can find the time.

Kind regards,
Zorro

BillyS · Post by **BillyS** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:34 pm

Drupal

URL Writing:
http://demo.opensourcecms.com/drupal/?q ... f-the-Blog

From their website:
Friendly URLs - Drupal uses Apache's mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.

I could not figure out how to add meta tags and the only one produced was the Title tag in core. I then found this:

Node (key)words:
This simple module allows you to set keywords for each node which increases the chances of getting better search engine positioning and visibility.

BillyS · Post by **BillyS** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 3:14 pm

On another note - while I think it is important to understand what the "competition" is doing, it's also important to understand how Joomla can separate from the rest of the pack in terms of quality. Personally, I chose Joomla because of the ability to control meta tags at the individual content page level. This I believe is a "stand out" feature - something that helps separate Joomla from the rest. That being said, I'm disappointed in how Joomla handle meta on non-content pages.

On my site, I made use of both Table - Content Section, Blog - Content Section and Blog - Content Category. I really wish I could control the meta tags at these levels.

My frontpage is horrible in terms of meta tags - but I don't want to add universal tags to all pages. In fact, because of the way Joomla handles tags, my front page looks spammy. Here's why:

If you publish on your front page five articles from the same section, but different categories. The way the meta tags work is that the section name gets repeated five times - that appears to be spamming. I'd hate to give up the ability for tags on pages - but it might be better than allowing frontpage, section and category pages from looking spammy. I think this is what was referred to earlier as "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

vavroom · Post by **vavroom** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:05 pm

Billy, you're already "covered" http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg157887

Thanks also for your comments about "the competition"

Zorro · Post by **Zorro** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:27 pm

Here's part 1, more when I find the time. This covers Drupal.

Drupal allows you to define a "page alias" once the module "path" is activated.

When entering the page's (or item's) contents, an extra field can optionally be used to type an alias, e.g. "about" or "products". The alias then replaces the parameters in the URL, e.g. http://mydomain.com/?q=item_name becomes http://mydomain.com/about.

Drupal allows users to modify the URL replacement scheme by "mass URL aliasing". The way to do this involves getting your hands a little dirty by tweaking a bit of code and is described in the help file I attached below.

To rewrite URLs, Drupal of course needs mod_rewrite and a .htaccess file which I also included in the file below.

Kind regards,
Zorro

vavroom · Post by **vavroom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:37 pm

Thanks Zorro

Zorro · Post by **Zorro** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:21 pm

Here's part 2. This covers CMS Made Simple.

It too allows you to define a "page alias" when entering a "content" item, i.e. a page.

The use of a .htaccess file allows you to have URLs ending in .html, .shtml or whatever. So, http://mydomain.com/index.php?page=about_us
becomes
http://mydomain.com/about_us.html
once a configuration directive to use mod_rewrite is set.

I've attached a sample .htaccess file below.

Kind regards,
Zorro

Zorro · Post by **Zorro** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:49 pm

Part 3 covers ModX. It allows for some more flexibility.

The simplest way for having SEF URLs is based on the page's ID (just like standard Joomla SEF):

http://mydomain.com/index.php?id=2 becomes
http://mydomain.com/2

You can define a prefix and suffix too, so with a prefix of "page" and a suffix of ".html" the above URL would read

http://mydomain.com/page2.html

Page aliases entered in the administration can be used as well (Kind of repeating myself, aren't I?) so the URL becomes

http://mydomain.com/about.html

More flexibility: The URL can reflect content hierarchy. If you so wish, you can have URLs such as

http://mydomain.com/grandparent/parent/child.html

so even duplicate aliases can be used in different content hierarchies.

The system can also automatically generate aliases from the page title when saving items.

Pretty neat and OpenSEF-ish ... except it's right there in the core.

Sample .htaccess file attached. The rewrite rules are pretty basic, all the magic is done inside the core.

I think I'll be skipping BlogCMS since at first glance it only seems to support ID-based URLS such as /item/1234 which is not what we're after here.

Of the four systems I looked at, ModX's flexibility and power with regard to friendly URLs impressed me the most.

Kind regards,
Zorro

tmaly · Post by **tmaly** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 2:42 pm

Reading the posts about Drupal got me thinking about another system I use. Perl has a framework called Catalyst
http://search.cpan.org/~agrundma/Cataly ... /Intro.pod

It is more of a MVC framework for building web apps rather than a CMS itself. However, the way it handles paths lends itself nicely to SEO. It has a main controller in a typical app. Any sub controllers you defined are automatically detected. If a sub say
sub bar : Path('foo/bar') { } is defined in a sub controller, a call to your app http://somedomain.com/myapp.cgi/foo/bar  will automatically call this sub bar. You can also match the paths based on regular expressions. Whats nice about this technique is the way it uses paths /foo/bar as part of the core system which lends nicely to pretty urls.

spinfx · Post by **spinfx** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 2:52 am

vavroom wrote: DRAFT
Suggestion Summary
Introduction of Dublin Core Metadata elements

Suggestion Description
Implement Dublin Core metadata elements as per http://dublincore.org in addition to current/improved meta keywords and description handling.

Supporting Argument(s)

References

How other systems handle this

Vavoom - this is likely to become a requirement for Australian Govt websites (still some discussion to go on this, but there is pressure from bodies such as NOI or its recent replacement).

The ability to select from a list of metadata (ie Dublin Core) those that will be displayed or perhaps the ability to create new meta tags might be a solution.

Most of us appreciate that SEs rarely look beyond Description and Keywords, but nevertheless, there will likely be a requirement to satisfy govt guidelines.

Hope that helps

Cheers, David

vavroom · Post by **vavroom** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:19 am

Thanks David, I don't know what the Core guys are doing with this at this point. But what I like to keep in mind is that a lot of the SE stuff goes way beyond search engine stuff. It's not a vaccuum, and improvements in one area will improve other areas.

virtualmaker · Post by **virtualmaker** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:47 am

Hi!

It is a Great idea! Thank you very much Jinx.

Regards!

tr34ser · Post by **tr34ser** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 8:55 pm

Sample .htaccess file attached. The rewrite rules are pretty basic, all the magic is done inside the core.

Friendly URLs - Drupal uses Apache's mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly

Actually my webhoster isnt supporting "mod_rewrite" which is essential to let RewriteEngine work.(200.000 customer europe)
I wrote them about the issue and a ticket is currently pending :-)
(http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html)

Any ideas if its possible without this - because this is also only an apache solution.

Basicly we need only assign a dozen custom URLs (sitemap) - then the core could use this when generating the section content.
Oh and plz feel free to move my post to a discussion thread.

Cheers

BadBoy · Post by **BadBoy** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:58 pm

I see the proposed title change as essential. I would like to vote for this change.

cradleofphil · Post by **cradleofphil** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 3:57 pm

Hello,

After reading through this entire post, I am wondering if anything has happened yet on proposal? I too see the change as extremely essential and would like to vote for this change as well. If anyone knows any updated information about this particular issue please let me know as I am right at the stage where multiple Joomla 1.0.11 sites need to be SEO optimized.

Thanks for your time,

Phil

Pesto · Post by **Pesto** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:10 pm

Hey vavroom,

Is there any insight you can share on how this all did or did not make it into 1.5 (since 1.1 seems to have been superceeded at this point?)

For my 2-bits, I would have like to seen a user definable title structure based on library of available shortcuts, ie: %pagetitle% %sitename% %metadesc%, this way you could use a custom blend of existing elements (though these elements would need to be extended to sections, categories, components and frontpage).

From an ease of template design and shortcut usage, my favorite CMS is http://www.bigmedium.com

Thanks!

Pesto

DocMartin · Post by **DocMartin** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 3:02 am

Yes, custom blend of existing elements would be good.

Then, as I've pointed out elsewhere (in thread that's been going for well over a year, without any evident impact on Joomla core!), I could readily migrate from my current use of OpenSEF, keeping URLs output the same ("cool IRLs" - no need for me to have yet more redirects in htaccess).

But as also noted elsewhere, there's more to improve than just URL generation.

keesjan · Post by **keesjan** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:16 pm

Suggestion
Integrate

1) opensef http://forum.j-prosolution.com/announce ... #post10545 for SEO and human friendly urls and
2) human and seo freindly titles http://www.joomlatwork.com/products/fre ... oomla.html titles
and
3) sitemap http://forum.j-prosolution.com/announce ... #post10545
and
4) xml sitemap http://forum.j-prosolution.com/announce ... #post10545

into the core of 1.5

Suggestion Description
see other posts

Supporting argument
I do not understand that great components are not integrated into the core. When opensef is integrated into the core it stimulates other component makers to use the opensef pluginmaker to also make ther own componentn URLS seo ready.

References (if appropriate)

How other systems handle this

absalom · Post by **absalom** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:26 am

I was suggesting something very similar as part of D&A for the 1.0.x stream, so I like the way you think, keesjan.

The real question is how to get rapid adoption of these principles and ideas into a project that is dictated from a 'top-heavy' development arc instead of a 'bottom-up' [* spam *] roots development community.

Edit: Well, Dublin Core is now complete.. if nothing else.

xperyens · Post by **xperyens** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 5:54 pm

Well, in my opinion is quite clear why joomla isn't prepared for these changes. Joomla, as a platform, is free, but many components or moduls aren't free. If they will made those changes, some components or modules would be useless. Who will buy them if they will be already implemented in the platform. That kind of decision will affect many others developers or sellers. I think that's why joomla dev team keep refusing the comunity "have to do" sugestions. I've readed this post and, now, joomla 1.0.12 is released. Well it's got the same problem. Meta tag's, like description or keywords, aren't fixed. If you have a component instaled wich allows meta tag's, it wont show up those descriptions if joomla isn't set up to do so. Let's take an example, like Hot Property. It allows meta tag's but joomla does not. Personaly i have an joomla platform installed on one of my domains with Hot Property component installed. I've checked a few joomla versions but none was accepting the meta tag's. I've tried to search for a good component or module to satisfy my needs but i couldn't find one. If joomla dev team won't implement those new requests, at least, they can sugest using components or modules for our needs. Joomla is a great comunity but it have's big problems. Thank you for reading this reply.

DocMartin · Post by **DocMartin** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:21 am

Please, please, let's not mention commercial component from a core developer that helps with URLs:

Instead of ordinary Joomla! / Mambo SEF URLs like:
http://www.site.com/content/view/1/2/ which don't tell much about your content you will get URLs in form:
http://www.site.com/Section/Category/Item/

oops
:P

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