Both OpenSEF and Sh404SEF are Joomla! components. They are purposely designed to rewrite Joomla urls to a more user-friendly format. Sh404SEF is the best plug-in for search engine friendly urls so far and it is FREE. A couple improvements have been made since OpenSEF.
- It is secure and manages title & meta tags
- It is optional to work with/without .htaccess file
- It handles header a lot better than OpenSEF
- It produces valid page not found 404 errors
- Its speed is fast in terms of caching
- It uses small DB (database) queries
- It eliminates duplicated links
- Do not unzip the file you just downloaded
- Go to your admin area, click on Installers/Components on the menu bar
- Find the url that you just downloaded com_sh404SEF_Version_1.3_RC_build_150.joomla.zip file, and click on Upload File & Install button
- If you succeed, sh404SEF should show up in the Components tag
- Click on Modules/Site Modules on the menu bar, make sure sh404SEF Custom tags module is the last module published, and make sure you publish it in the last module position in your template; otherwise it won't work properly.
- Click on Components/sh404SEF on the menu bar and click on Click here to switch to extended display (with all available parameters) button on the upper right corner
- Make sure you click on sh404SEF Configuration button, and configure it to meet your needs
Two problems I found so far. One of them is my Sitemap is still looking like this: http://www.internetoutput.com/component/option,com_sefservicemap/Itemid,40/ which I don't like it. I created an url using View/Edit Custom Redirects. However it doesn't seem to be working.
Another problem is that I don't like index.php showing up in my urls. I found the solution for this from Joomla Forum. Go to Components/sh404SEF on the menu bar, click on sh404SEF Configuration, click on Advanced tag, find Rewriting Mode?, change it to be with .htaccess (mod_rewrite), and save it. I tested my website and it works!
Update: Sitemap link has been fixed. Now it looks like the way that is supposed to be: http://www.internetoutput.com/sitemap.
4 comments:
So why is it better to use sh404sef than the joomla sef ?
Well, I used to have Open SEF first. I had some issues with it. So now I am using Sh404SEF. It allows me to configure a lot of things including things I talked about in this post: How to Optimize Your Joomla! Website?. Spend sometimes you'll learn a lot of advanced stuff by using it.
Great article.I like your thougths and it's really great.Great discussion.Thanks for sharing.
Joomla is an opensource source CMS language which is used for building the website easily, it save lot of time and also the money now a days there are so many joomla templates available, they are very well build up, so its too difficult to choose the best one.