Hi,

My website is mostly ZOO, but I needed to create a separate Joomla article in the article manager. I linked it to a menu item and the original non-sef URL should look as follows in JoomSEF:

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=392

However this is what I get on the front-end:

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=392&catid=33

For some reason, &catid=33 is being appended onto the end of the URL, and the SEF url isn't loading at all. I have spent a while trying to figure out what I am doing wrong but it hasn't helped.

Does anybody know what the root cause might be? Any answers will be much appreciated.

Hi,
JoomSEF's Content extension automatically adds the catid to every article URL to avoid duplicate URLs (with and without the catid).
Anyway this shouldn't cause any problems, as the catid is also added when JoomSEF looks for the SEF URL in database. Is the SEF URL created automatically by JoomSEF or did you create it manually?

The URL was created manually, I have disabled automatic URL creation completely.

I haven't had problems creating URLs manually until now.

Is there any more information I can provide for the problem to be diagnosed?

If you create SEF URL manually, you need to provide the correct catid so the non-SEF URL corresponds to what JoomSEF expects. Also make sure that your non-SEF URL follows required format:
1. it needs to start with index.php
2. option variable needs to be first
3. Itemid needs to be set in individual field
4. all other variables needs to be in alphabetical order

So for example your non-SEF URL should be set in JoomSEF as:
Old Non-SEF URL: index.php?option=com_content&catid=33&id=25&view=article
Itemid: 392

That fixed it!

The format of the non-sef url you gave worked a treat.