extensions.Siliana.com

Getting some help

I am lost, where can I get some help ?

Best place to find assistance is on the support site at http://extensions.siliana.net/en/. There you will find:

• A documentation section, under sh404SEF menu item
• A forum, accessible from the main menu

If your problem is not directly related to sh404SEF, but maybe more general, like a request for assistance in setting up SEF URL for IIS servers for instance, you may want to post directly in Joomla forum, at http://forum.joomla.org.

Using sh404SEF

After installing sh404SEF, nothing changes on my site

Have you activated sh404SEF ? When installation has been successfully completed, the component is not activated by default, as it is better you have a chance to review its basic settings before your site URL change.

Go the sh404SEF control panel using the sh404SEF entry in Joomla Component menu. There, click on the Configuration button (first left button). The first entry you will see on the configuration screen is:

Enabled ? (probably currently set to No)
Set this to Yes, and click on the Save button. You will be prompted to Erase the URL cache. Click on OK, and sh404SEF should be activated now. You need to visit your site front-page, so that your new SEF URL are created. If your site is multiligual, you should read Multilingual sites.

You talk about available configuration options, but I don't see them when I click ont the Configuration button in sh404SEF control panel

From version 1.3, sh404SEF has a dual-level user interface. This means that, as a default option, most available configurations option are hidden, and only the most important and/or commonly used are shown. You can switch from the « Standard » display to the « Extended » display by clicking on the link shown on the right side of the control panel, just above sh404SEF logo.

Clicking this link will toggle the interface from Standard to Extended and back.

I have activated sh404SEF, but my URL are still index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12...

You must also activate Joomla SEF URL option for sh404SEF to be taken into account. If not, Joomla will not even bother about sh404SEF. This setting is found under the SEO tab, in your Joomla site General configuration.

Please note that when you click on the Yes radio button to activate this function, Joomla will remind you that you must “Rename htaccess.txt into .htaccess� for SEF URL to work. This is true for (currently) all SEF extensions, except sh404SEF, which can operate without this .htaccess file. This is the default setting, so you don't have to worry at all about .htaccess file. Sh404SEF will work out of the box on most server configuration.

What is this .htaccess file for anyway ?

Your web server is here to answer simple requests coming from a visitor browser. A web browser request a page, which must actually match the name of a file available on your webspace. For instance, all requests for some Joomla-generated content must be done through a single file, called index.php, located in your webspace root directory. This file is the single entry point for your web site.

A request such as :
http://mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12

Tells your server to call upon the index.php file (and also to pass additionnal instructions - option=com_content&task=view&id=12- to Joomla to allow finding the desired page)

Your web server has no problem with this, because the index.php actually exists.

Now with SEF URL, a typical page request sent by a user browser will be like :
http://mysite.com/my-page-title.html

This obviously should cause a 404 – Page not found error, as there is no such file as my-page-title.html residing in the root directory of your site.

And here comes the .htaccess file. Its role (well, one of its many possible roles), is to recognize such a situation, and instruct your server not to declare a 404 error, but instead send the whole request to Joomla index.php file, which will take care of it.

When the request is actually passed on to Joomla index.php file, then sh404SEF kicks in and do further decoding of the request to something Joomla can understand.

Why is /index.php/ inserted in all my URL ?

Well, please read first the question/answer above about .htaccess file. /index.php/ is another way of doing the job of a .htaccess file. It has several advantages though :

• It will work on most Apache servers as is, requiring no further configuration
• It may work on IIS server, though unsupported

Basically this means you can do without finding the right content for your .htaccess file, and this may be the difference between a smooth install and setup, and a real nightmare if your server settings are not appropriate for URL rewriting

As soon as I activate sh404SEF, all links on my site result in a 404 – Page not found error. I can only access the front-page

sh404SEF uses default settings that should allow proper operation on most Apache servers. If you get up-front 404 errors on all your links, your SEF URL probably do not have a /index.php/ bit in them (for instance : www.mysite.com/index.php/my-page-title.html). So you probably have changed the default settings in sh404SEF configuration, from “no .htaccess (/index.php/)� to something else. You should either : a/ switch back to “no .htaccess (/index.php/)� - preferred option, or b/ set up a “.htaccess� file in the root directory of your site. See next question about .htaccess files

I have activated Joomla Sef URL, and sh404SEF is enabled. I set it up to work with a .htaccess file, and I have renamed htaccess.txt to .htaccess, but I still get only 404 : Page not found errors

The .htaccess file provided with Joomla is designed to work with Joomla SEF URL (mysite.com/content/task,view/12/34). To hae it work with any 3rd party SEF component, you must make some changes to its content. The changes are outlined within the file itself, and with more details in the documentation section of our site.

I have set up a .htaccess file as per instructions found on the support web site, but I still get 404 errors when I click any link on my site

Instructions found on sh404SEF support site in documentation are only guidelines. There is no one-size-fits-all instructions about the content of a .htaccess file, as it must be tailored to your specific server settings. As a reminder :

Start with Joomla-supplied .htaccess file. It is in your web site root directory, currently called htaccess.txt. You must rename it to .htaccess file for it to become active. Before you rename it to .htaccess, this file has absolutely no effect whatsoever. For use with sh404SEF, as with other SEF components, you need to make a few changes inside this file (best to do them before renaming it to .htaccess). Please read documentation again at: http://extensions.siliana.net/en/kdjhfkdsjhfdskjfhds.

If this does not work, you should contact your hosting company to assist in the process, they are the one who know about how your server is configured.

Please note that if you are using IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Server), rather than Apache, then using a .htaccess file requires installing additional software, as .htaccess are not a built-in feature of IIS. In such cases, the preferred option is to use only the “no .htaccess (/index.php/)� or “no .htaccess (/index.php?/)� options in sh404SEF configuration, in Advanced Tab.

My site is broken. I have installed a .htaccess file, but now all I get is 500 errors, and no one can access my site

Sometimes the default content of Joomla .htaccess file, or possibly changes you have made to it while trying to make it work, can result in your site being broken. It will then only display an error page showing a 500 error, or another.

To get your site back, simply rename the .htaccess file in your site root directory to something else (like htaccess.txt, as it was named initially).

Then you can try again with a different content for .htaccess file.

After changing some settings, I am prompted to « Erase the Url cache ». What should I say ?

All URL generated by sh404SEF are built only once, and then stored in the database to be re-used for subsequent requests. When you change some settings, this may change the way URL are built (for instance, you may decide to include from now on section name in content URL). In such a case, URL stored in the database need to be cleared, and replaced by new ones, so you should click on OK to have URL deleted from the database (see next question, on Rebuilding the URL database)

There are also cases when you change a parameter, but this will not alter the way URL are built (for instance activating/de-activating security features or meta tags management). In such case, you should click on Cancel, so that already built URL stay in the database.

I changed some settings to change the way my URL looks, and answered OK when prompted to erase the URL cache, but now all I get is 404 : page not found errors

When a page request comes in (mysite.com/I-want-this-page.html for instance), sh404SEF looks into the URL database to find if this URL exists, and what its non-sef, Joomla-understandable counterpart. If the URL does not live in the database, then we don't know what is the non-sef equivalent, and therefore declares a 404 : Page not found error.

When you clear the URL database after changing some parameters, the database is empty, so no URL can be found anymore (except for the home page mysite.com, which will always be accessible)

So now the question becomes : How do I get URL back into the database ?

Well, you need to visit first your homepage. As said before, the home page is always accessible, because Joomla can understand this URL without sh404SEF assistance. When the homepage is viewed, all URL shown on that page will be recalculated and added to the database.

For instance, very often the front page will have the main navigation menu. By loading the front page once in your browser, all URL on your main menu will be recalculated and stored (plus any URL showing on the front page as well, like links to stories, latest news,etc). Now if you click on one of these menu items, you will go to another page. Likewise, when this page is displayed, any link showing on the page will have its URL re-calculated by sh404SEF and stored in the database.

So from one page to the other, all URL are rebuilt as soon as they are displayed on a page. It follows that the recommanded way of handling this is simply to use an online sitemap generator.

Why ? because a sitemap generator will do exactly that : tell it what is your homepage address (http://mysite.com), and it will browse this page, and then follow any link it'll find on this page, and then all links found on all other pages. The result is that it will browse all pages on your site, automatically and rapidly, therefore all URL for your site will be rebuilt by sh404SEF automatically

My modules or templates show on wrong page when sh404SEF is activated, or they don't show

You have been hit by Joomla Itemid. Itemid is a piece of data used by Joomla to decide which module or template should be used on a give page. For background on this, please read (Alledia.com).

The use of Itemid by Joomla will lead many times to the so-called 'Duplicate content' issue, which is rather a duplicate URL issue : the same content can be accessed from various location within your web site, and therefore various URL. This is considered a bad thing by search engines, and will likely results in reduced ranking performance. Please note this happens regardless of whether you are using a SEF component, Joomla SEF URL or even Joomla original non-SEF URL.

sh404SEF tries to fix this issue as much as it can, and is usually quite successfull at that. Sometimes though, this can lead to side-effects such as modules and/or templates being displayed on wrong pages.

To fix this :

1. Go to sh404SEF configuration (Extended display if using Version 1.3 or more recent), Advanced tab, Itemid management section
2. Locate the "Guess Itemid on Homepage" and "Insert menu Itemid if none" settings, and set both to "No".
3. Click on the Save button near top of screen to save this new configuration. When prompted to "Clear url cache", click on the OK button.
4. Go to your site homepage, and start navigating again to have URL recreated.

Should be fixed. If not, head over to the support forum at http://extensions.siliana.net/forum/.

My sub-menus don't show up anymore

This is the same problem as previous question. Joomla Itemid is playing tricks, and you should be able to fix this setting the same options to No, in Advanced configuration

URL for component (name_your_preferred_comp_here) are still looking ugly, like mysite.com/component/com_mycomp/task,show/id,12/Itemid,45

What you see is Joomla default SEF URL. Bulding SEF URL for a specific component requires a little bit of software, called a plugin, specifically written for this component. This piece of software will tell sh404SEF what information should be included in each URL coming from this component, and where to find the required data.

For instance, sh404SEF has a plugin for Joomla regular content component. In this plugin, there are instructions about transforming index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12 into /title-of-content-element-with-id-12.html, including how to look up the content element title in the database, and more.

Sh404SEF comes with a number of plugins, for commonly used components. It can also make use of similar plugins that were made for other SEF components (such as OpenSEF or SEF Advanced, and sometimes Joomsef).

Whenever a plugin is available for a given component, sh404SEF will be able to build nice URL for it. If a dedicated plugin cannot be found, then sh404SEF will revert to Joomla default URL.

There are currently close to 2 500 extensions for Joomla 1.0.x, only a handlful have plugins, so if you are missing SEF URL for one component, why not jump in and write a plugin for it ? You will find detailed documentation on writing plugins in the documentation section of the support site.