DISCUSSION: Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF)

WillieManillie · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2005 4:28 am

If as much energy that it took to produce this nonproductive thread, were displaced into the core development, maybe friendly SEO features would have been completed by now.

Elpie · **Joined:** Wed Aug 17, 2005 11:26 pm **Posts:** 869

Mods - please move this to a discussion board. It is clear that people will continue to debate on this thread and the FAQ's should be kept as FAQ's.

Just my humble opinion anyway

guilliam · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2005 1:05 pm

@Elpie, suggestion duly noted. will get back to this thread.

- g

Jamsoft · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 5:40 pm

All of this bickering and yelling. The SEF isnt really THAT complicated, people. I did a complete rewrite of the original SEF for the developer shed sites (http://www.devshed.com for an example).

To be honest, it takes only mere lines of code to fully sef a module.

Also, the URL can be your best friend, or it can be your worse enemy. Take this URL:

http://www.joomla.org/content/view/638/74/

Instead of trying to make this:

http://www.joomla.org/news/Joomla-1.0.5-Released.html

You could try something more like this:

http://www.joomla.org/cv/news/Joomla-1. ... 38-74.html

With that, you get the full benefits of the SEF urls (your keywords are all indexed as part of the urls), AND the data that the sef module would normally need to look up, is actually included inside the url.

For customizing the SEF in Joomla, I added a small bit of code:

if (file_exists("mysef.php")) {
include("mysef.php");
}

All of my customizations go into my own sef module. This makes work short and sweet, when I want to add new conditions.

Anyways, those are my (hopefully) helpful hints. Im able to keep all SEF running nice and sweet on my sites, with only small effort.

PhilTaylor-Prazgod · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 5:44 pm

Quote:

All of this bickering and yelling. The SEF isnt really THAT complicated, people. I did a complete rewrite of the original SEF for the developer shed sites (http://www.devshed.com for an example).

Did you now? I believe that Emir did the original SEF for that site (In fact I know he did cause I paid for it!) and looking at the URLS now they dont appear to have been changed since that time, they still appear to be using Emirs SEF!

Maybe I miss exactly what you did ?

Jamsoft · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 5:51 pm

Phil,

Not really the spot for more bickering and finger pointing. Fact is I had to rewrite about 70% of the code that was done, as using the original code over time kept revealing new issues. This isnt an insult or anything towards Emir, SEF was brand spanking new, and we had very specific business practices we wanted to follow.

To be crystal clear, the structure of the content item urls is the same, since that is what we originally requested. The code that derives those urls, and then decodes them, has been completely rewritten. Cant always judge a book by its cover

Truth be told, I wouldnt know what I know today about doing SEF modifications, if it werent for Emir's code. The fundamental idea he incorporated was brilliant, and is still the only way to fly.

Rich

PhilTaylor-Prazgod · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 5:54 pm

Quote:

Not really the spot for more bickering and finger pointing

Sorry - never meant it to be that :-) :-) Just from the outside it appears nothing has changed :-)

If it were not for the devshed project, SEF may not have been implmented in Mambo/Joomla for a long time after it did.

Jamsoft · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 6:00 pm

Ok cool. Dont want my first posts here to be negative at all

And as far as the Devshed project, Im glad some kind of good for the community came out of it..

WillieManillie · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 7:33 pm

Where can this SEF module be obtained? I am still unsure as to why there isn't a joomlaforge area. The sourceforge is too confusing. Thanks.

PhilTaylor-Prazgod · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 7:44 pm

WillieManillie wrote:

Where can this SEF module be obtained? I am still unsure as to why there isn't a joomlaforge area. The sourceforge is too confusing. Thanks.

http://www.sakic.net

SEF Advance is not GPL or Free

Jamsoft · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 7:44 pm

WillieManillie wrote:

Where can this SEF module be obtained? I am still unsure as to why there isn't a joomlaforge area. The sourceforge is too confusing. Thanks.

The SEF module Im talking about editing, is "/includes/sef.php". I dont do any edits in the base file itself, except check for my own sef file, and then include it if it exists.

Saka · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2005 7:53 pm

Jamsoft wrote:

Fact is I had to rewrite about 70% of the code that was done, as using the original code over time kept revealing new issues. This isnt an insult or anything towards Emir, SEF was brand spanking new, and we had very specific business practices we wanted to follow.

That code was written 2 years ago and was very early version of human readable SEF for Mambo. That became ground for commercial SEF advance which evolved during the time and is ages ahead of that early code.

Again this goes away from original FAQ topic. FAQ is about activating basic SEF in Joomla. Please open another thread for anything else.

publicinstinct · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:52 pm

Hey Guys,

I know this probably doesn't belong to this thread but.....

masterchief wrote:

One is to require a field like the infamous title_alias in the content table. Actually, step back a sec.

What would be handy is to have two common fields in all data tables:

name - this is the text using in SEF url's, eg "spacenews"
title - this is the 'real' title, eg "News About Space"

Name would need to be held constant to maintain URL stability but the actual title can change to whatever you like. They could be the same.

Off course, I understand where you are coming from and it makes perfect sense to keep the name field constant. On the other hand, SEO is a process and sometimes it is necessary to change the target keywords. Therefore, I believe it is important to be able to easily change the pathway.

Here is my idea:

Using php, it is no big deal to redirect to new url and return the status code 301 (Permanently moved). This way the new page would inherit the old pagerank, which is off course a major advantage. Following your idea, I would have to create a new item in order to change the pathway. Nothing inherited whatsoever.

I see basically two ways to do this:

1. Option:

- When saving a content / menu item, check if the title_alias / name has been changed
- If so, save the old value in a new table #__redirect, mapping the old url to the new one.

An incoming request would look like this:
- Look up the internal url that corresponds to the current pathway
- If there is none, lookup in table #__redirect, redirect to the new pathway (Status 301)
- If there is none, process Error 404 Document not found

2. Option:

- The pathway is in a separate table and points to an Itemid, there may be more than one pathway to the same Itemid
- Look up the itemid that corresponds to the current pathway and retrieve name / title_alias (Both could be done with one query )
- Compare pathway and title_alias / name
- Redirect (Status 301) if not the same, else load as usual

I am just a newbie to this forum, but this approach seems to be more userfriendly to me and still is a lot more search engine friendly than a static pathway. However it wouldn't interfere too much with the running system (exspecially Option 2) and I am sure it could even be done on a plugin basis (i.e. OpenSef). In a separate table it also appears backward compatible.

Anyway, your doing a great job keep it up.

Cheers

http://www.publicinstinct.co.za
http://www.swissfin.co.za

JLanda · **Joined:** Thu Nov 03, 2005 4:27 am **Posts:** 12

I can't believe I've read through all this. I learned alot. BTW Saka, thanks for the info in Post 1. It was just what I needed.

Maverik · **Joined:** Wed Jan 04, 2006 1:08 pm **Posts:** 22

de wrote:

Maybe worth to mention a thread on how to use SEF without mod_rewrite:
http://forum.opensourcematters.org/inde ... 094.0.html

Anyone know where I can find this article ? The link was working a couple days agao but not anymore

PhilTaylor-Prazgod · **Posted:** Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:34 pm

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,1094.0.html

zerolight · **Joined:** Fri Oct 07, 2005 9:58 am **Posts:** 19

I'm still having huge problems with this. My host says that mod rewrite and .htaccess override is enabled. In my Gallery G2 installation I can if I want, enable what they call url rewrite to enable SEF in Gallery. There's even a test page which confirms that module rewrite is enabled.

However, when I rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess, and enable SEF in Joomla via the Administrator GUI (double checking that the setting has taken effect in configuration.php) it doesn't work. I get page not found errors and so on. I've been trying to get this working since Mambo 4.5.1 (I'm running Joomla 1.0.7).

Anyone help?

focalguy · **Posted:** Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:32 pm

If you haven't yet, you might check out this post:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,31813.0.html
try the changes in that htaccess.

zerolight · **Joined:** Fri Oct 07, 2005 9:58 am **Posts:** 19

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately it didn't work. I tried all conifgs of that htaccess file to no avail.

focalguy · **Posted:** Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:49 pm

I don't know what else to tell you then... your host doesn't have anything they can try to get it working? Hopefully someone with more knowledge of this can help you.

zerolight · **Joined:** Fri Oct 07, 2005 9:58 am **Posts:** 19

One thing I've noticed is that although almost nothing works, one link to a content item does work with the SEF enabled. Everything else gives me an error saying that I don't have access to that content. I also notice that it changes the urls (my site is in a sub dir called content) to my url/content/content/... which seems odd.

zerolight · **Joined:** Fri Oct 07, 2005 9:58 am **Posts:** 19

Problem resolved. You can't use "content" as a directory name to install Joomla into. Hehe.

PhilTaylor-Prazgod · **Posted:** Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:22 pm

doh - that would kill it for sure :-)

focalguy · **Posted:** Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:47 pm

glad you got it working.

Seedillume · **Joined:** Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:35 am **Posts:** 2

For the life of me, I cannot seem to get SEF to work correctly. I have Ipower.com as my webhosting. My website uses Vdeck for management. I have another domain name pointing to a subdir on the server. I am using Jomla v1.0.5 for the other domain name. With SEF enabled, I get this error message when clicking on a link: 400 client request error.

I have gone through all 5 of the troubleshooting steps. The .htaccess file is renamed correctly and located in the subdir where Joomla is installed. Even step 4 (Google redirect) works. I have this path: /home/*User_Name*/public_html/*Subdir* However, when I click on system (within Joomla Administration) and look at Apache Environment, I see this: DOCUMENT_ROOT /home/*User_Name*/public_html//*Subdir* Notice the extra slash before the subdir. When I use this path in the .htaccess file, SEF still doesn't work. I still receive the same 400 error message from vDeck.

Any help would be appreciated

Quote:

PHP Version 4.4.1
System FreeBSD host330.ipowerweb.com 4.10-SATA-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.10-SATA-RELEASE #0: T i386
Build Date Jan 30 2006 21:21:26
Configure Command './configure' '--with-apache=/root/vdeck/work/apache_1.3.33' '--with-xml' '--enable-bcmath' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-inline-optimization' '--with-openssl=/usr/local/ssl' '--with-curl=/usr/local/lib' '--enable-ftp' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local' '--with-png-dir=/usr' '--with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6' '--enable-magic-quotes' '--with-pear' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-track-vars' '--with-ttf' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--with-zlib' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-gd' '--with-kerberos' '--with-imap=/usr/local/imap-2004' '--with-imap-ssl' '--enable-mbstring' '--enable-mbstr-enc-trans' '--enable-mbregex' '--enable-safe-mode' '--with-ming=/root/vdeck/work/ming-0.2a' '--with-mhash' '--enable-exif' '--enable-versioning' '--enable-wddx' '--with-gettext=/usr/local/bin' '--with-iconv' '--with-pspell=/usr/local' '--with-dom=/usr/local' '--with-dom-xslt=/usr/local' '--with-xmlrpc' '--enable-soap' '--with-bz2' '--without-cyrus' '--without-fbsql' '--without-fribidi' '--without-hwapi' '--without-informix' '--without-ingres' '--without-interbase' '--without-ircg' '--without-java' '--without-mcve' '--without-msession' '--without-oracle' '--without-oci8' '--without-ovrimos' '--without-qtdom' '--without-libedit' '--without-sybase' '--without-sybase-ct' '--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' '--without-msql' '--without-mssql' '--enable-xslt' '--with-xslt-sablot' '--with-gettext=/usr/local'
Server API Apache
Virtual Directory Support disabled
Configuration File (php.ini) Path /usr/local/Zend/etc/php.ini
PHP API 20020918
PHP Extension 20020429
Zend Extension 20050606
Debug Build no
Zend Memory Manager enabled
Thread Safety disabled
Registered PHP Streams php, http, ftp, https, ftps, compress.bzip2, compress.zlib

apache
APACHE_INCLUDE no value
APACHE_TARGET no value
Apache Version Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_log_bytes/0.3 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/4.4.1 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7d
Apache Release 10333100
Apache API Version 19990320
Hostname:Port misstorres.com:80
User/Group www(80)/80
Max Requests Per Child: 5 - Keep Alive: off - Max Per Connection: 30
Timeouts Connection: 60 - Keep-Alive: 5
Server Root /usr/local/apache
Loaded Modules mod_security, mod_log_bytes, mod_frontpage, mod_php4, mod_ssl, mod_setenvif, mod_auth, mod_access, mod_rewrite, mod_alias, mod_userdir, mod_actions, mod_imap, mod_asis, mod_cgi, mod_dir, mod_autoindex, mod_include, mod_status, mod_negotiation, mod_mime, mod_log_config, mod_env, http_core

redhatmatt · **Posted:** Wed Feb 15, 2006 1:09 am

Anyone having trouble with SuSe, mod_rewrite, SEF, OpenSEF..... all on suse...

1. If you have not figured out already mod_rewrite does not come enabled by default on Suse... (strange, but SuSe thinks "differently")
2. first make sure you have done this: http://enarion.net/web/apache/htaccess/ ... e-on-suse/
3. after your SURE you got that right... check your /var/log/apache2/error_log for a bunch of these...
child pid XXX exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
4. If you do update mod_php4 with YaST (I advise doing all others as well.)
5. This should fix the mod_rewrite PROBLEMS.

I wasted a friggin' week (at least) dealing with this, before finding out problem was the SERVER (not the joomla or permissions, or .htaccess.... ugh!!!!!!) I bet from what I have read- LOTS OF POOR PEOPLE HAD THIS ISSUE!!!
So I thought others should know!
:'( :-\ :-X :-[

???

Seedillume · **Joined:** Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:35 am **Posts:** 2

Well, I have updated to Joomla 1.0.8 and now I get a 404 error instead of the previous error. Any help would be nice. Maybe I should be asking for help in another forum?

kawika · **Posted:** Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:06 pm

Hi all,

I have SEF working great. I was led here by another thread about having custom urls as mentioned earlier in the thread so that "http://www.yourmarketing.org/content/blogcategory/19/29/" could become "http://www.yourmarketing.org/basics".

I think I understand what needs to be done in terms of having an extra field in the database for content items and then a lookup on the frontend.

Has this been implemented?

Any hacks available?

Thanks.

compass · **Joined:** Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:31 am **Posts:** 1246

Quote from Emir....

Quote:

All current solutions (including my commercial one) are patches that require constant support work.

Until DB is structured in a more flexible way, use my core SEF (which is solid good and stable) or some 3rd party solution. There are tons of free ones, so what's your problem?

I don't reall y know much about the saga here, but....

"All current solutions (including my commercial one) are patches that require constant support work"
and
"use my core SEF (which is solid good and stable)"

Did he just imply that free 3rd party pnes are patchy but his commercial one is stable?

kenmcd · **Posted:** Wed Mar 22, 2006 4:23 am

LOL!!

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