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Hello to all,
It has been quite some time since I last posted here, and now is a time
for some update and also some change. Those of you who have been using
sh404sef over the last years, and came back to this site in recent
months may have noticed a "change of pace" in both new releases and
also in my posting in the forum. Those of you who are new have found
that basically you were left on your own.
Despite recent improvements in native Joomla 1.5 SEF urls handling, it
seems sh404sef is still needed as the downloads have never been so
high. The software is decently stable and is used in a very large
number of web sites. I cannot estimate this number, but it's certainly
in the tens of thousands.
I do think it matters very much to provide some way of continuing
sh404sef, especially to all the professional website creators among
you, and ensuring it's longevity. There has been a large number of
requests for a professional support scheme, for instance, something I
have not been able to provide. I am now trying to organize a continued
development/support scheme and I will be in touch with several people
in the Joomla world for this, and will post back here with news as soon
as more information is available.
However, and for various reasons which are strictly personal, I have to
admit I cannot any longer spend time working on sh404sef. I don't have
20 to 30 hours per week available for sh404sef and time has come for me
to move on, so I am hereby announcing that I will no longer develop or
support sh404sef, as I have been doing since 2006.
Of course, there are some consequences for the numerous users of
sh404sef. As urls are such an important matter for sites - one url,
one page - it is a very difficult task for a webmaster to switch to
another extension or to Joomla standard SEF, without the risk of
loosing rankings.
As mentioned above, I am trying to organize the continuation of
sh404sef with other people. Preliminary contacts are looking good,
there are interested people, and hopefully it should only be a few days, at most weeks before I can come back with more details. If you are a user,
there is no rush right
now, the site and forums here will continue running as usual, except I
will of course remove the donation page.
Such a Joomla extension requires a very high level of commitment, as it
is intimately tied up with both Joomla and its thousands of
extensions. I think I have provided this level of commitment for 3
years, and it has been a very rewarding experience for a newcomer to
the open source world such as myself.
I'd like to thank all the people that have shown support and help over
the last years, especially the forum moderators team, who have helped
greatly on the support side of things in the past months, as well as all translators.
My best regards to you
Yannick Gaultier
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