JoomSEF's main functionality is to rewrite Joomla! standard URLs in a form of domain.tld/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=5 to the more human readable and search engine understandable form of domain.tld/article-category/article-title. You can easily manage these URLs and make them look anything you like.

You can very easily set description, keywords and other meta tags for each URL separately, so you have maximum control of your meta tags. JoomSEF can also generate the meta tags for the most favourite components automatically for you.

JoomSEF 3 supports JoomFish (provides multilingual content) from its very first versions and since then it has many options to create multilingual SEF URLs.

JoomSEF 4 supports Joomla's native multilanguage management model or the FaLang component for multilingual content.

If you ever want to change your URLs that are already well indexed by search engines, or when you migrate website to Joomla, you will need to set the 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones, so the old URLs remain functional without a penalization from search engines. Using JoomSEF you have three options to do this:

The XML Sitemap file is used to tell the search engines which pages on your web site you want to be indexed, what priority each of your pages has, how often the content of the pages changes and when was the page changed the last time, so search engines can optimize their indexing strategy based on this information. Using JoomSEF you can easily control all of this information without a need to write a single XML line.

This feature allows you to create a set of words with assigned URLs. JoomSEF then automatically hyperlinks any appearance of these words in your pages content to their corresponding assigned URLs.

Keeping your JoomSEF and its extensions up-to-date has never been simpler. On one page you can see what versions you have currently installed and what are the newest versions and you can automatically upgrade your JoomSEF or any of its installed extension with a single click. Moreover you can see a list of your components without a JoomSEF extension installed and if the extension is available on our server, you can get it again with a single click - the free extensions are installed right away and paid versions will redirect you to our e-shop.

The process of URL Rewriting is crucial for JoomSEF to run. Depending on the web server you are running, read one of the following sections.

For JoomSEF to be active, two settings in Joomla! Global Configuration need to be switched on:

Search Engine Friendly URLs and Use Apache mod_rewrite (Use URL rewriting in Joomla 1.6 and above).

These can be enabled either from JoomSEF Control Panel in the SEF Status box or in (menu) Site → Global Configuration → (tab) Site → (box) SEO Settings

Allows access to main component configuration sections.

Figure 4.2. JoomSEF Configuration tab

Allows you to manage your SEF URLs, their meta tags and 301 redirects.

Figure 4.3. URLs Management tab

Allows access to some more advanced features in JoomSEF.

Figure 4.4. Extras Management tab

Offers tasks to maintain your SEF URLs and watch for errors.

Figure 4.5. Maintenance tab

Provides information about using JoomSEF and support options.

Figure 4.6. Help and Support tab

Provides basic information about the currently installed version of JoomSEF with its description and links to ARTIO website, license and donation through PayPal. It also shows the newest version available, if version checker is enabled.

Figure 4.7. ARTIO JoomSEF panel

Shows the status of SEF related configuration on your website with buttons to enable or disable them, so you can control all the most important configuration at one place.

Figure 4.8. SEF Status panel

Shows the JoomSEF related newsfeed directly from ARTIO server.

Figure 4.9. ARTIO Newsfeed panel

Shows the information about number of URLs stored in JoomSEF's database.

Figure 4.10. Statistics panel

These features are used to identify wrong URLs on your website and store relevant information about their origin in the database along with the URL. It may be helpful to find out where the strange URLs are coming from.

These options are used to control how the SEF URLs Meta Tags will be shown in the page.

You can set meta tags that will be globally shown on every page of your web site here.

Some predefined meta tags can be set in the Standard Meta Tags box - these include the generator tag and the meta tags with authentication keys for Google Webmaster Tools, Live.com Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer.

You can also set your own meta tags using the Custom Meta Tags box - just click the Add Meta tag button and set the name and content of the meta tag. To remove the meta tag, click the Remove Meta tag button.

The Sitemap XML file can be automatically pinged to Google, Yahoo! and Bing every time you generate the new Sitemap XML file. You can also set the Ping services (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_(blogging) for more information) which may be pinged manually from the Sitemap Manager page.

In the 404 Page box you can set the basic options for displaying the 404 error page.

Use this box to select the menu item to be used when the 404 page is displayed.

You can use this box to edit your Custom 404 Page article. You can also use the Joomla!'s Article Manager for this - the Custom 404 Page is the uncategorized article with the 404 title.

If you have purchased the paid version of ARTIO JoomSEF, enter your Download ID in the JoomSEF Download ID field. The ID is used to identify your copy during online updates.

Here you may enter your account information for ARTIO web site if you have one. This may be used for better integration with technical support or providing relevant information to you. No information except these two fields are sent from your website.

When you open JoomSEF URL Manager using the Manage SEF URLs menu item or JoomSEF control panel button, you will see the following list of the URLs stored in JoomSEF's database.

Figure 6.1. List of URLs

The columns are described in the following table.

You can also use the set of filters to filter displayed URLs by various criteria.

Figure 6.2. URLs Filters

The ViewMode filter offers the following options:

Please note that in JoomSEF 3 the ViewMode filter is replaced with the tabs.

The Hits and Itemid filters are straightforward.

Filtering URLs by their SEF URL or Real URL can be based on textual match or by a regular expression - if you put a text directly, any URL containing that text will be matched, but if you use the 'reg:' prefix, then the regular expression search will be used. For example if you want to display only the URLs starting with home you can use the filter reg:^home.

The Component and Language filters are again straghtforward, however the Language filter is only available if the multilanguage management is enabled.

The Reset button resets the filters.

If the Show Links to Homepage view mode is selected, then there is also the Create links to homepage button visible in the Filters box. You can use it to create the URLs linking to homepage in every available language if they were not created automatically.

If the Record 404 page hits option is enabled in JoomSEF's configuration then all the URLs accessed on your site that returns the 404 error are logged in the database. You can browse this log by selecting the Show 404 Log view mode in JoomSEF URL Manager.

The layout is very similar to other view modes, however there is one special action available for logged 404 URLs - for each 404 URL you can directly create the 301 Redirect using the Create 301 button in the toolbar. This is very useful when for example some of the pages on your web site is not available any more, but it is still indexed by search engines or some users have it saved in their bookmarks. Using the 404 log you can find this out that some 404 URL is accessed many times and simply create the 301 Redirect to the new page, so users won't see the Not found error.

As in any other Joomla! component the toolbar contains buttons you can use to perform various tasks with the URLs. However, there were too many buttons for the actions affecting more than one URL at once, so we've decided to use a little different approach - as you can see on the following figure, there are two select boxes and a Proceed button in our toolbar.

Figure 6.3. JoomSEF URL Manager toolbar

The first select box is used to set if only the selected URLs (Only selected option) or all the URLs currently displayed (All filtered option) should be affected. When the All filtered option is selected and there is more than one page of displayed URLs, then ALL the displayed URLs will be affected, not only the ones displayed on the first page.

In the second box you can select the action to perform with the URLs.

By clicking the Proceed button the selected action will be performed.

You can create new URL by clicking the New button in the toolbar. To modify existing URL you can either click the corresponding SEF URL in the list, or select the corresponding check box and click the Edit button in the toolbar. When creating or modifying the URL you will see the following page.

Figure 6.4. SEF URL page

By using the import and export functions you can easily backup your SEF URLs, transfer them to another web (for example from the development to the production web site) or migrate your SEF URLs from another SEF component to JoomSEF or from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5.

6.1.5.2. Importing URLs

When you click the Import button in the toolbar you will be taken to the Import URLs page.

Figure 6.5. Import URLs

To import the URLs from a file with previously exported URLs use the Import URLs From File box - just select the file in the Import File field and click the Import URLs button. Using this function you can import URLs exported from any previous version of JoomSEF or even from sh404SEF or AceSEF components - the file format will be recognized automatically and imported correctly. When importing URLs from JoomSEF version 2.x or earlier the Joomla 1.0 URLs will be automatically updated to the Joomla 1.5 format. When importing URLs from sh404SEF make sure to first import the URLs and then the meta tags.

If you've had sh404SEF or AceSEF previously installed you can use the Import URLs From Database box to import the URLs directly from their database - just click the Import URLs from AceSEF table or Import URLs from sh404SEF table button.

Please note that the URLs Trash is currently supported only in JoomSEF 3.

URLs Trash is used when you want to update your SEF URLs to match current settings, without losing their associated meta tags, aliases and other data. When you trash some URL, none of its associated data are deleted, but when its non-SEF URL is encountered during browsing your website, the whole record is restored from trash except the SEF URL, which is newly generated according to current settings.

When you Purge URLs, they're also not deleted, but only moved to trash, so none of their meta tags are lost. In time when your website is being browsed, new SEF URLs are being generated but your old meta tags are still used.

So if you want to remove some URL completely along with its meta tags, trashing it is not enough - you need to delete it.

You can use the URL Manager to set all of the predefined meta tags or define your own custom meta tags (JoomSEF 3 only) for each URL individually. This can be achieved using the SEF URL page (as described in Creating and modifying URLs section) on Meta Tags tab.

There's also the Use sitename in Title option which can be used to override the global setting from Title and Meta Tags tab in JoomSEF's Configuration.

Figure 6.6. Meta Tags tab

The Meta Tags Manager can be used to set the Title, Description and Keywords meta tags for multiple URLs at once. You can open the Meta Tags Manager using the Manage Meta Tags menu item or Manage Meta Tags button in the JoomSEF's Control panel.

Figure 6.7. Meta Tags Manager

Here you can see the list of URLs with their Title, Description and Keywords meta tags. You can change these meta tags for all the URLs displayed on the page and then save them all at once by clicking the Save or Apply button in the toolbar.

You can also use the Filters box to display only the URLs you want to manage meta tags for.

Purging the URLs basically deletes all the automatically created SEF URLs that are not marked as Locked from the database. No URLs saved as Custom or Locked are deleted. The deleted URLs are then created again when browsing the page with the new configuration.

You can purge the URLs using the Purge URLs button in JoomSEF's Control panel on the Maintenance tab. Please note that in JoomSEF 3 purging doesn't delete URLs, it only moves them to trash (see URLs Trash section).

If you don't want to purge all the URLs, for example if you change the URLs generation settings only for one component, you can use the URLs Manager and using the Filters or manual selection delete (or trash) only those SEF URLs that need to be recreated.

More information about the URLs Manager can be found in the URLs Management section.

By purging or deleting the URLs you make sure that whole URLs are regenerated from scratch. But for example, what if you don't want to lose your custom meta tags during the process? Or vice versa, what if you have your SEF URLs customized but you would like to automatically regenerate their meta tags?

There are three actions that you may use, described in following subsections. All of them are accessible from the URLs Manager toolbar or the Maintenance tab of JoomSEF's Control Panel. When using the Control Panel buttons, actions are run for all automatically created SEF URLs (not set as Custom) that are not Locked.

Figure 7.1. Installed JoomSEF Extensions

The Installed JoomSEF Extensions list contains the following fields:

Figure 7.2. Components without JoomSEF Extension installed

The list of components without JoomSEF Extension installed contains the following fields:

The JoomSEF Extensions use the standard Joomla! ZIP installation package format. There are three ways to install the JoomSEF Extension:

Even though the standard Joomla! installer can be used to install the JoomSEF Extension, it is not the standard Joomla! extension, so the Joomla! installer cannot be used to uninstall it. The only way to uninstall the JoomSEF Extension is by following these steps:

Figure 7.3. Extension tab

The Extension tab contains the parameters that are specific for the current extension. It is the main extension parameters tab where you can set the appearance of the URLs generated for the component. This tab is available only for components that have the corresponding JoomSEF Extension installed. You can see the example of this tab for Content extension in the figure above.

Figure 7.4. Meta Tags tab

The Meta Tags tab is also available only for components with JoomSEF Extension installed and only if the extension supports JoomSEF's automatic meta tags generation feature. The options are also specific for the component. You can set how the meta tags should be generated for the selected component here.

Figure 7.5. Common tab

The Common tab contains the options that are common for all the components. These options are:

Figure 7.6. Registration tab

The Registration tab is used only to set the extension's Download ID for the JoomSEF Extensions that are paid. You need to set the Download ID for the paid extensions here so you can use the Upgrade feature for them.

Figure 7.7. Variables Filtering tab

The Variables filtering feature is used as a security measure. You can use it to set which variables are only allowed in the URLs for the component and what are their allowed values using the regular expression rules. This is very useful as a protection from duplicate content penalization and from some attacks on your web site.

The usage is:

You can find the example of Variables filtering usage in the Content extension parameters.

The options available on this tab are:

You can browse the Internal 301 Redirects either by using the Manage 301 Redirects menu item or the Manage Internal 301 Redirects button from JoomSEF's Control panel.

Figure 8.1. Internal 301 Redirects Manager

The fields in the manager are very straightforward:

When creating new Internal 301 Redirect or modifying the existing one the following page is shown:

Figure 8.2. Internal 301 Redirect page

As explained above, both the Moved from URL and Moved to URL need to be the correct SEF URLs without any domain or non-SEF variables.

The SEF URL Aliases can be set when creating new SEF URL or modifying the existing one using the SEF URL Manager - the aliases can be set on the Aliases tab:

Figure 8.3. SEF URL Aliases

You can enter one SEF URL Alias per line in the Alias list field. The aliases must be relative without the leading slash (so they cannot contain the domain part) and they may contain non-SEF variables. Some correct examples are: old-url.html or article.php?id=10. Incorrect aliases are: www.domain.tld/something.htm (is not relative) or /something.php (contains the leading slash).

The usage of the SiteMap Manager is easy, but it can be a little confusing for the beginners. Before the Sitemap XML file may be created, you first need to select which URLs should be present in it and what are their parameters. To do this, follow these steps:

To simplify the task of selecting the URLs as Indexed, you may use the Filters fields to display only the URLs you want to index. You can also use the Action fields in the toolbar to set the properties for multiple URLs at once.

When you have all the URLs selected as Indexed and their properties are set correctly, just click the Generate XML button in the toolbar and the Sitemap XML file will be created for you according to the options set in the JoomSEF's Configuration on the SiteMap tab. When the XML file is generated, it can be either pinged automatically to Google, Yahoo, Bing or some other services, or you can ping them manually using the buttons in the toolbar. You can also use the file for example in the Google Webmaster Tools.

The Simple view can be accessed by clicking the Edit .htaccess menu item or the Edit .htaccess button in JoomSEF's Control panel. It lets you very easily manage the 301 Redirects and the main options available in your .htaccess file.

10.1.1.1. 301 Redirects

You can use the 301 Redirects in the .htaccess file to redirect one SEF URL to another URL. Unlike the Internal 301 Redirects the .htaccess 301 Redirects can be used to redirect some URL to a different domain. In the Simple view you can see the list of your .htaccess 301 Redirects:

Figure 10.1. .htaccess 301 Redirects

You can very easily manage these redirects using the New, Edit and Delete buttons in the toolbar. The fields of the redirects are as follows:

Redirect from

The original SEF URL that should be redirected. This URL must be relative to your web site root (without the domain) and must start with the slash.

Redirect to

The new URL that should be redirected to. This URL doesn't need to be SEF and it can either be the full absolute URL (with domain part) or the URL relative to your web site root but starting with the slash.

When in Simple view click the Advanced Edit button in the toolbar to access the Advanced view. In this mode you can basically just edit your .htaccess file manually like you were using any text editor, but you don't need to leave the Joomla! administration area. But be aware that any incorrect change in your .htaccess file can make your website inaccessible!

Figure 10.2. Edit .htaccess - Advanced view

The words can be assigned to SEF URL using the SEF URL Manager when you edit the individual SEF URL on the Internal Links tab.

Figure 10.4. Internal Links tab

The fields available are:

You can assign the existing SEF URLs to words using the Words Manager, which can be opened using the Manage Words button on the JoomSEF's Control panel.

Figure 10.5. Words Manager

You can use the Words Manager to create, edit or delete the words which have SEF URLs assigned. The Word Edit page is very similar to the Internal Links tab in the SEF URL Edit page:

Figure 10.6. Word Edit page

The fields are:

The Statistics tab can be used to easily obtain data on how well individual pages of your website are indexed by Google, how fast they're loading and if they conform to W3C standards.

Figure 10.7. Statistics tab

When you open the Statistics tab, you can see a list of your SEF URLs stored in JoomSEF with no data at all. In order to get the data from Google, first select URLs that you want to obtain the data for and then click the Update Statistics or Update Validity button in toolbar. You will be redirected to Update statistics or Update validity page that will query Google for the desired data. Once the update process is completed, click the Finish button to get back to the Statistics page.

Because Google and W3C limit number of queries they will respond to we recommend updating maximum of 20 URLs a day. Obtained data are cached with your URLs until next update.

You can obtain following data:

The Google Analytics tab allows instantaneous access to the most essential usage statistics from your Google Analytics account.

Figure 10.8. Google Analytics tab

You need to set your Google e-mail and Google password in Google Analytics Configuration options first before you can use the Google Analytics tab to access your usage statistics, otherwise an error message will be displayed.

Once your access credentials are correctly configured all the websites registered with your account are displayed in the Google Analytics Account dropdown box. Choose a website and dates range you are interested in and click the Update Google Analytics link to update the tab with website usage statistics from your account.

You can use this option if you have JoomSEF's installation ZIP package downloaded. Select the package in the Package File field of the Upload Package File box and click the Upload File & Install button:

Figure 11.1. Upload Package File box

The package file needs to contain the same or newer version of JoomSEF than the one currently installed. If the package file with the same version is used, the reinstall is initiated (only the files are rewritten, so you won't lose any of your configuration or SEF URLs).

Be aware of using the correct package - if you have paid version of JoomSEF installed and you select the package with free version to upgrade to, your paid version will be changed to free one. This also works in the opposite way - if you have free version installed, and you purchase and download the paid package, you can use it to change your free version to paid one without losing any configuration and SEF URLs.

For JoomSEF 4 you can also install the installation ZIP package directly in Joomla!'s Extension Manager: Install page - your currently installed version will be automatically updated with the ZIP package version.

JoomSEF can also be upgraded automatically from the ARTIO Upgrade server. This function can be used to upgrade your JoomSEF or to reinstall it if you already have the newest version installed. Just be aware to set your Download ID corectly in JoomSEF's Configuration on the Registration tab if you are using the paid version of JoomSEF, otherwise your version will be changed to free one when using this feature. It can also be used in the opposite way - if you have free version of JoomSEF installed and you've purchased the paid version, just set your Download ID in JoomSEF's Configuration and use this feature to change your version to paid one. You won't lose any of your configuration or the SEF URLs when using this function.

According to the Download ID set, there are two options how the Upgrade page can look like:

Furthermore, if your JoomSEF is already up to date, there is the Reinstall button instead of the Upgrade button available:

Figure 11.4. Online JoomSEF reinstall

In Joomla! 2.5 you can also use its native Extension Manager: Update page to search for available JoomSEF 4 version and update it directly.

The only way supported in JoomSEF 3 to have multilanguage website is to use the JoomFish component.

The best way to use JoomSEF with JoomFish is to disable the System - Jfrouter plugin in your Joomla's Plugin Manager. JoomSEF will then take care of all the language recognition.

If for any reason you want to have the JoomFish router enabled, JoomSEF is capable of working together with it if you have JoomFish version at least 2.0.3 or newer installed, but you must follow a few rules to configure JoomSEF properly for this. When JoomFish router is enabled, there are some restrictions for using the options in the JoomSEF's Configuration on the JoomFish tab:

If you set the options properly according to these rules and to match the settings made in the JoomFish router parameters, JoomSEF should work with JoomFish router enabled.

JoomSEF 4 supports two ways of generating multilanguage content in Joomla! - native Joomla! multilanguage capabilities and using the FaLang component. For both ways the following conditions have to be met:

When all the above conditions are met, JoomSEF should work correctly on your multilanguage website generating and translating SEF URLs according to your configuration.