This is a list of frequently asked questions about ARTIO JoomSEF Joomla! extension for generation SEF (search engine friendly) URLs. Please, visit also our new JoomSEF FAQs.
- After installing the component, when I click any link, I get "404 Page not found" error.
- After installing the component, I experience "500 Internal server error" message.
- How do I install new version of the component?
- How do I install a SEF extension to JoomSEF?
- I am experiencing duplicate URLs like -2, -3, etc. Is this an error? What should I do?
- How to reduce number of SEF links generated?
- Does the component work with extension XY?
- What if I do not like URLs generated by JoomSEF or its extension?
- After upgrading JoomSEF, the duplicate URLs have appeared, why is that?
- After installing JoomSEF, there are SQL queries visible over my page, why is that?
I experience error "Could not save the SEF URL to database: Unknown column 'Itemid' in field list." - Why do I see PHP warnings or fatal errors in JoomSEF's administration?
- Why doesn't my menu work as expected? Some modules are not showing.
- Why doesn't Checkout button in VirtueMart work?
- JoomSEF is not working when JoomFish installed.
- URLs containing "." character in path do not work.
- Why am I getting error on JoomSEF extension installation?
- The installer tells me the installation .zip file is corrupt.
Cannot install JoomSEF extension. - HTML anchors are not working, on subpages images or other resources are missing
- After installing the component, when I click any link, I get "404 Page not found" error.
You have probably forgotten to create and edit your .htaccess file. If .htaccess file does not exists, you may create it by renaming the htaccess.txt file included in Joomla! root directory. Then make sure that the RewriteCond and RewriteRule directives are uncommented in the section for 3rd party SEF modules (almost end of the .htaccess file). Finally set the RewriteBase to match the root URL of your Joomla! installation at the server (this means the path to root with out the server name - e.g. if your Joomla! is installed as http://www.domain.org/somedir/myjoomlaroot, that the right setting would be RewriteBase /somedir/myjoomlaroot). Please see component documentation for more details.
- After installing the component, I experience "500 Internal server error" message.
There is probably some misspelling or invalid configuration in your .htaccess file. Please recheck it and do needed modifications. Please see documentation for details. If you are unable to fix the .htaccess content, rename it to _htaccess for example, so you can get access to your site again, and discuss the .htaccess possible content with your web host.
- How do I install new version of the component?
Since the JoomSEF version 1.3.3, there is an update utility provided. You can upgrade your installation easily by clicking "Update" button and the newest version will be downloaded and upgraded automatically for you. The automatic upgrade will preserve your current configuration and all generated URLs.
Asalternativeor for older versions, you can use the default Joomla!'s component unistall and install utility to remove the old version and install the new. However if you do so, your configuration and manually entered URLs (if you have any) will be lost and you will need to set them again. Therefore you are strongly adviced to backup them using provided utility first. Also you can do the update manually by replacing the files from the distribution package. This is however recommended to experienced users only.
- How do I install a SEF extension to JoomSEF?
In order to correctly install a SEF extension, go to Components -> JoomSEF, click the Install button in the toolbar and use the Install SEF Extension form to install new extension from the package.
- I am experiencing duplicate URLs like -2, -3, etc. What should I do?
If you are facing duplicate content items links e.g. http://yoursite.you/article.html, http://yoursite.you/article-2.html, etc. that lead to the same content, this is most probably caused by so called "Itemid" variable (although there may be other reasons also).
The Itemid is internal Joomla! variable used to identify the source of a URL link. E.g. main menu or sub menu item that your visitor used to get to a certain content. According to this variable, different Joomla! configurations are applied - e.g. what template will be used or what modules will be visible, etc.
Since JoomSEF 1.4.0, several new configuration options are provided in "Advanced configuration" section. The option "Exclude source info" may be used to exclude the Itemid variable from the URL and thus eliminate the duplicates caused by it. However, ignoring it completely may lead to unwanted Joomla! functionality, like not switching the templates as desired or so. Whether this will be a problem for you or not depends mainly on the way how your site is designed and how complicated it is. If you need to fix this, the Itemid should be "reappended" to the SEF URL as an extra part using the option "Reappend source". Then the resulting URL will look like http://yoursite.you/article.html&Itemid=xy.
Since JoomSEF 2.0.0 there is a possibility to set your own Itemid for each extension that will always be used with it - thus even when "Reappend source" is set to Yes, that extension won't have the ?Itemid=xy appended. You can find this option in extension parameters. If you leave the "Override Itemid" field blank, the default Itemid will be used, but won't be appended as ?Itemid=xy in URL. Thus you can achieve that the ?Itemid=xy will be added only to those extensions that need it (mostly content). But be careful, setting Itemid to some random number can ruin your menu functionality!
Another new option is "Ignore multiple sources". If selected, only one URL will be created for each page using the first Itemid. Every other link varying in Itemid only will be ignored and the already created one will be used instead. But again - this can ruin your menu functionality! This option has no effect on extensions with custom Itemid set.
- How to reduce number of SEF links generated?
Some duplicates or increased ammount of SEF links that may be undesirable may be caused by other variables used for paging, sorting, etc. These can be also excluded from the SEF URL and reappended behind it. To do so, active the option "Append non-SEF variables to URL".
- Does the component work with extension XY?
You can find all the extensions available for free download here and all the paid extensions here.
- What if I do not like URLs generated by by JoomSEF or its extension?
The JoomSEF component always tries to generate search engine friendly URLs. In many cases, and for standard simple components, this behaviour is sufficient. However, for some more complex components with special functionality this may not be efficient enough or may even cause the components to stop working. In such case, you may choose to disable SEF generation for such module in JoomSEF configuration. If you would still like to have SEF URLs for such components, a special extension defining rules for how the specific components's URLs should be treated needs to be written. This extension might be either developed by the module author or we can include it in our distibution. At presence, we have done support for DocMan and Joomlaboard components. Please contact us if you want certain module to be also supported.
- After upgrading JoomSEF, the duplicate URLs have appeared, why is that?
If you have updated from previous major version, e.g. from 1.4.0 to 1.5.0, you may experience that some of the URLs are duplicated, even though they were okay previously. This may be caused because the format of SEF URLs stored in your database has changed and the new URLs are looking slighly different than the old ones. In such case, if you do not want JoomSEF to regenerate them automatically (by either purging the existing one or deleting them manually) or if you have many customized URLs, you will need to use the JoomSEF DB upgrade script 1.5.0 to update the DB for you. Your are highly encouraged to backup your DB prior to doing this! After updating, the old URLs will have the same format as the new ones, so they will be matched correctly and no duplicates will appear.
- After installing JoomSEF, there are SQL queries visible over my page, why is that?
I experience error "Could not save the SEF URL to database: Unknown column 'Itemid' in field list."This means that JoomSEF could not run the SQL query on your database. Please, check that Joomla has right privileges set to access all the DB tables. This error can also occure when there is some older version of needed table left in your database - try uninstalling JoomSEF, manually deleting the needed table and installing JoomSEF again. Always backup your database prior to doing such changes! Please note this especially occures after you had sh404sef installed previously. sh40sef will not remove its tables correctly, so you need to make sure they are removed before installing JoomSEF. If you had sh404sef component installed previously, please, check the related topic in our support forums for the right procedure:
Installing JoomSEF after sh404sef. - Why do I see PHP warnings or fatal errors in JoomSEF's administration?
If you see errors like "Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in ..." or "Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in ...", please, upgrade to the newest version of JoomSEF - this problem is caused by incompatibility with PHP4 running as CGI. As regards other errors - please, report them in our support forum.
- Why doesn't my menu work as expected? Some modules are not showing.
(Problems with modules not showing or the correct menu items not selected)This problem is most likely caused by incorrect Itemid set for SEO URL. You can control the way JoomSEF handles this variable using "Exclude source info", "Reappend source info" and "Ignore multiple sources" options in configuration or with some options in extensions' parameters.
When using option Ignore multiple sources, you need to make sure, your SEO URL is stored with correct menu item id (Itemid value). In this mode, JoomSEF works in way that it detect the first link leading to given content item and uses the Itemid associated with it. In case, this link is not the menu link and it uses other Itemid than the corresponding menu item, then the SEF URL can be stored with "wrong" Itemid (other than you would like it to have). In such case, you need to use JoomSEF SEO URL editor/viewer, locate the SEF URL and change the Itemid manually. Then the modules associated with particular menu item and its id (Itemid) will show up correctly. After doing such changes, make sure to clear JoomSEF cache.
- Why doesn't Checkout button in VirtueMart work?
If the Checkout button in VirtueMart redirects you to the VirtueMart's frontpage or other unexpected page, go to JoomSEF's configuration and set the "Set server QUERY_STRING?" option to "Yes".
- JoomSEF is not working when JoomFish installed.
Go to Extensions -> Plugins and check that the System - ARTIO JoomSEF plugin is enabled and JoomFish - router plugin is disabled.
- URLs containing "." character in path do not work.
This is dependant on web server configuration. At some, "." in the URL "path" part is support while on other it is not. The safest is not to allow JoomSEF to include "." character to SEF URLs. This can be configured in JoomSEF options, by adding "." to the set of characters to be stripped of SEF URLs.
- Why am I getting error on JoomSEF extension installation?
When trying to install JoomSEF extension, I am getting error message like:
Warning: JInstaller::require_once(.../libraries/joomla/installer/adapters/sef_ext.php) [jinstaller.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in .../libraries/joomla/installer/installer.php on line 216
This error will appear when you are trying to install JoomSEF extensions via Joomla default installer. All JoomSEF extension has to be installed via JoomSEF installer, accesible from JoomSEF control panel in backend. For details, please refer to JoomSEF Documentation - Extension installation. - The installer tells me the installation .zip file is corrupt.
Cannot install JoomSEF extension.If you received error from installer that the ZIP file is corrupt or cannot be unpacked, first make sure the file was downloaded ok and/or try to redownload it. If the error lasts, try to unpack the file using another ZIP archiving application and if unpacking works repack it and try installing again.
- HTML anchors are not working, on subpages images or other resources are missing
Please note, that if base href generation is used, then all relative anchors, such as just "#anchor", or all other resources using relative paths (such as "/images/myimg.png" or "myfiles/file1.pdf") are automatically translated with the base href URL.
This means, that if you are using anchors and homepage as base href, all anchors will be looked at within the homepage, not the actual SEF URL! Using the same logics, if using actual SEF URL as base href and having "/images" as relative path, this path will be understood by browser as it would be appended behind the SEF URL! This is the most often reason why anchors do not work or some resources (such as images or styles) appear to be missing in the page when SEO and generation of SEF URLs that adds virtual directory structure in the URL addresses is on.
To solve this, you have to either:
- disable generation of base href tag or
- keep the base href tag generation on, but make sure all links using SEO URLs + anchors or pointing to resources are absolute, not relative
