What is The OpenSEF? It is an open source advanced Search Engine Friendly component for Joomla!. It enables automatic search engine friendly URLs for Joomla! core components and manual text-based search engine friendly URLs for 3rd-party developer components. Moreover SEO Assistant adds many search engine optimization tools.
With this extension your URLs will become more friendly to the Search Engines. Instead of your URL looks like this http://www.yoursite.com/index.php? option=com_weblinks&Itemid=23, it will look like this http://www.yoursite.com/web_links.html. You can tell that the latter one is more readable by Search Engines. Thus it is called Search Engine Friendly URL.
Download OpenSEF for Joomla! 1.0.x here: the latest release is joomla_com_opensef_2.0.0-RC5_SP2.zip. Here RC means 'Release Candidate' - meaning it is not final. It is not recommended for production sites because it may contain bugs. However, I've already installed it because many sites are using it without problems. I don't see any problem to my website either. If you want to go on, follow the instructions below:
- Do not unzip the file you just downloaded
- Login to your admin area, click on Installers/Components on the menue bar
- Browse the URL of your downloaded joomla_com_opensef_2.0.0-RC5_SP2.zip file, then click on Upload File & Install button
- If it is succeeded, click on Site/Global Configuration on the menu bar, and click on SEO tag
- Once it is open, click 'yes' for Search Engine Friendly URLs
- Make sure you rename htaccess.txt(which should be in the root directory of your website) to be .htaccess
- On the menu bar, click on Components/OpenSEF/Configuration, set OpenSEF Enable? to be 'yes', and save it
- Download .htaccess file, open it, and find Begin - Joomla! core Section; Comment this section out (put # in front of each line in this section)
- Scroll down, find Begin - 3rd Party SEF Section; Comment this section in (take out # that is in front of each line in this section)
- If the line, Option +FollowSymLinks, causes problems with your server configurations, comment it out too
- Finally save .htaccess file, upload it to you root directory of your server, and now you can check your URLs to see whether they changed to be Search Engine Friendly URLs
Related Articles:
How to Optimize Your Joomla! Website?
Which Joomla! SEF is Better? OpenSEF or Sh404SEF?
2 comments:
I almost pulled my hair out when I was getting 404's on ALL my links and I couldn't figure out why. This is very helpful. This should be included in the .rar file.
Thank you Lanna.
Hello Anonymous;
I am so happy that this post is helpful for you.
Although the OpenSEF for Joomla! works good for search engine friendly urls, now I use Sh404SEF which gives me more controls over header tag and description of each url.
Also check this out How to Optimize Your Joomla! Website?.