Hi David,

We have the following multilingual configuration in our Joomla 2.5 website:

Menu Name / Homepage Type / Language / Homepage Menu ID

Dutch / VirtueMart » Front page / Dutch / 160
Greek / VirtueMart » Front page / Greek / 157
Italian / VirtueMart » Front page / Italian / 161
German / VirtueMart » Front page / German / 158
Portuguese / VirtueMart » Front page / Portuguese / 187
French / VirtueMart » Front page / French / 159
Spanish / VirtueMart » Front page / Spanish / 167
Chinese / VirtueMart » Front page / Chinese / 164
Japanese / VirtueMart » Front page / Japanese / 165
Czech / VirtueMart » Front page / Czech / 163
Russian / VirtueMart » Front page / Russian / 162
English / VirtueMart » Front page / English / 166
Australia / VirtueMart » Front page / Australia / 241
US / VirtueMart » Front page / US / 238

We can see the Joomsef produces the following urls in the backend:

Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=el&Itemid=162 (WRONG!)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=de&Itemid=157 (WRONG!)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=el&Itemid=241 (WRONG!)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=el&Itemid=166 (WRONG!)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=el&Itemid=161 (WRONG!)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=us&Itemid=238 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=en&Itemid=166 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=au&Itemid=241 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=it&Itemid=161 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=de&Itemid=158 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=nl&Itemid=160 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=fr&Itemid=159 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=es&Itemid=167 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=pt&Itemid=187 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=ru&Itemid=162 (CORRECT)
Home page index.php?option=com_virtuemart&lang=el&Itemid=157 (CORRECT)

It seems that there is a mix of lang and itemid variables which are not correlated with each other. The same problem happens also with products. I don't know if it is an issue with Joomsef, however, Joomsef should never allow (in my opinion) URLs with Itemids and Lang values not matching each other. We need this fix asap, as it is messing the website i'm afraid :(

I would appreciate your comments!

Regards,
Chris

Hi Chris,

I don't know why such URLs are created, you could find out by enabling the URLs Source Tracing in JoomSEF's Configuration on the Advanced tab and deleting the wrong URLs. When they're created again the source information will be stored along with them.

But anyway thank you for your suggestion, we could add an option not to SEF URLs whose lang and Itemid don't match. We'll add it to our requested features and try to implement it to next version of JoomSEF.

Hi David,

Thank you for the suggestion; URL Tracing gives some info, but still we are quite puzzled, we get so many duplicates. The problem is that the itemids change without any logic, just like that!

We need a fix with Joomsef as follows:

- No url with unmatching lang / itemid vars to be created
- When such wrong non-sef url is detected, Joomsef to correct the itemid with the proper item set in Joomla (or just redirect to the correct url). It seems that the proper match should be made according to the selected language, which is always correct as far as i can see.

If it doesn't require much time, we can discuss about purchasing support hours, please advise, we need this asap!

We'd like also your opinion about what is causing this behaviour, after checking our website. I can see that other users in the forum have the same problem, so there must be something going wrong there (not necessarily with Joomsef)

Regards,
Chris

The same problem!
I always delete wrong URLs.
The site is bilingual. The menu item "Directory" has Itemid=105 when lang=ru and Itemid=107 when lang=ua.
And occasionally links appears with lang=ru and Itemid=107.

atrus80:
There's already an option in JoomSEF implemented to either not SEF the URLs with mismatched language and Itemid or to fix the language code in URL to match the Itemid. Fixing the Itemid to match language would only work if correct menu associatons were set for all the menu items.

This problem is as old as Joomla itself. In my personal opinion Joomla shouldn't use Itemid at all but instead determine the correct menu item from the content displayed. I think the possibility to have the same content displayed with different menu selected is also not very good for SEO and it's just confusing.

roma1508:
Have you checked the sources of this problem using URLs Source Tracing as described in my previous post?

dajo
Yes! Everything OK now
many thanks