Joomla 2.5.14
JoomSEF version 4.4.0

We are experience a weird happening where many of our existing SEF URLs are going to 404s

If we unlock all the URLs and update them, then the SEF URLs will display the correct content.

1. Do you URLs have to be locked after updating?

2. I know we are on an older version of JoomSEF, could this be causing the issue? (We have an an involved approval process enable to upgrade extensions)

3. We noticed that when multiple non SEF urls exist for a single SEF URL, in many instances they all have square checks over them, if we select a primary URL (round check) then all the other URLs go to a round x and the page seems to display correctly.

Any thoughts what could be happening?

Picture of issue - intown.clarify-it.com/d/hv24em

Hello,

I'm sorry for the late reply.

1. No the URLs don't have to be locked. You can lock your URLs so you don't accidentally delete/modify/update them.

2. Disabling the "Handle query variables as non-SEF" option in your JoomSEF's Configuration on the Advanced tab could help reduce the number of duplicate SEF URLs with different non-SEF URLs, but I'm not sure whether it's already available in the version of JoomSEF you use.

3. This is expected behaviour - when there are duplicate SEF URLs, JoomSEF by default chooses the non-SEF URL to use randomly from the database, so you need to manually set which one is the one to use (Active).

The non-SEF URLs on your screenshot look like they were created because of some search engine visiting SEF URLs with some non-SEF variables added. The behaviour in such case can be controlled by the "Handle query variables as non-SEF" option mentioned above.