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
If you are interested, download
com_sh404SEF_Version_1.3_RC_build_150.joomla.zip here. The installation is very easy. Just follow the instructions below to install it:
- 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
If you did not have enabled
Joomla Default SEF in
Site/Global Configuration area, check
Extension - The OpenSEF Component For Joomla! 1.0.x to get that done. Follow instructions there to make changes to .htaccess file or you can check
Sh404SEF documentations out; they tell you exactly what you need to do.
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.