Xith WEB Site - Joomla! powered

[eMKa]

@arne

mmh I still get that error when showing the HOWTOs
but I don’t get it, if I’m not logged in.

strange…

also the font size of the line numbers in the source-code view is different then the font sizes of the code itself.

Arne, I beg you pardon for not having carefully read your messages :-\ This SEF thingy is really a pain in the ass.
I was lurking around on Xith web site, fixing a handfull of mistakes of mine, and I saw you were online. Then I double-checked the HOWTO page wasn’t broken. And I figured it was. After a bit of investigation, I found the following on Joomla! forums :

If you have read any of my guides (free download in Docman library), then you will have seen I have discussed, integrating Search Engine Friendly URLs (or SEF) into Joomla websites. It bascially takes the “index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=39″ and turns it into something like “/content/view/1/2/ “.

Now, as I have been discovering on my site, there are some crucial considerations you need to think about before changing to Joomla SEF.

* First, a myth, enabling SEF in Joomla will not make your site easier to index by search engines. Perhaps 2 years ago search engines struggled to read dynamic URL’s, but now, that is not a problem.
* Where they do help is humans. Obviously a link like the first one above is hard to read. So really SEF should be re-named HUF, HUman Friendly URL’s!

OK, but a few months ago I did want SEF on my Joomla website, so I took the plunge. Here is a round up of what I looked at:

* Joomla SEF (built in)
  Free, its already in your Joomla installation
* Open SEF (www.open-sef.org)
  Free and open source
* 404_SEF (www.joomlastuff.org/404sef.html)
  Free and Open Source
* SEF Advance
  Commercial Product ($50)

I have tried all of these. Here is what happened. First I activated Joomla built in SEF. Sometimes this causes problems right away as there can be issues in the .htaccess file and SEF. Also, it doesn’t work easily on windows servers. The Joomla forums has a FAQ: Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF)in Joomla. So I got that working. This step you must always do, get the built in SEF working and THEN install a 3rd party one.

So that takes me to my next issue. All of these 3rd party SEF have the same problems:

* They are not 100% reliable. Installing them can break your site, and not all components work with them. For example, this WordPress blog component does not work with the SEF I am using. So I had to hack a fix, the result of which breaks RSS (sorry).
* They all produce different URL’s. This one can kill you. You install one of the SEF’s in Joomla. A few months later you discovered a component that is critical for you doesn’t work with it. So you consider changing. But now all the links to the pages on your site will be different! This will destroy your careful SEO campaign.
* They don’t work with many 3rd party components. Enough said.

I experienced all of these. I started with 404, couldn’t get it to work, changed to Open SEF, that was still unstable, and now use Advance, which doesn’t work with this blog. Each time all my links from other sites were pointing to the wrong place. Sometimes I wish I had just stayed with the default Joomla SEF that is built in!

So what do to? If you are thinking of using SEF, especially a 3rd party one make a test installation with all of the components you will want to use and test each one. I wish I had Smiley , but you can learn from my mistakes.

So I said to myself “ok let’s disable this SEF thingy before it mess up all the website”. And I looked at OpenSEF anyway (I just love things with “Open” within ^^) and I installed it and now it WORKS ! Phheww I thought we’d never get out of that.

If you experience any further problems, please tell me. Some links are broken I’m actually fixing them.

[eMKa]

I added the “Who’s Online” module.
There are no longer strange array-thingies on the website, thanks to OpenSEF.

[arne]

Damn it! I just spend over one hour writing that picking HOWTO and what does it do, when I want to save it?
It logs me off and discards all I’ve typed!!! grrr…

BTW… what’s the difference between the save and the apply button?

[eMKa]

@arne

Damn it! I just spend over one hour writing that picking HOWTO and what does it do, when I want to save it?
It logs me off and discards all I’ve typed!!! grrr…

BTW… what’s the difference between the save and the apply button?

Oh, really bad, I’m so sorry. It must be that it log off automatically after ~an hour to avoid security problems…

The apply button commit changes and stay on the edit page. The save button commit changes and return to the view page.

So the best is to click the apply button several times during editing… And to copy/paste your text before saving… That really sucks I agree, I’ll see if I can do anything to avoid that.

[eMKa]

Fixed. The duration of a session was of about 900 seconds without activity (for security reasons). This correspond to a quarter of hour. I set it to 15000 which gives you 4 hours. It’s a security risk I take here, but I know it’s REALLY annoying to lose all your work.

[arne]

good - thanks