Jul
16
2007
| Great SEO Improvements in Joomla 1.5 |
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| Monday, 16 July 2007 | |
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One of the questions I hear most often on the Joomla SEO Forums and at Joomla.org is: "Will Joomla 1.5 be any better for SEO than 1.0.12?" The answer, we're pleased to say is yes. Behind the scenes work is being put into some possible SEO changes for 1.5:
What may change in 1.5?Those of you who have used the SEF Patch from Joomlatwork.com will recognise many of the same ideas at work. That's because the improvements are being done by the same person - Richard from Joomlatwork. See these screenshots for a dramatic view of the potential changes:
Inside Menu Items and Content Items
http://www.jo...ocs/joomla150_frontpage_seo.jpg You can gain control over page titles, the index/noindex tag, plus Google cache and snippet control Inside the SEO tab in Global Configurationhttp://www.jo...dmdocs/joomla150_seo_config.jpg
The tab has been greatly extended to include complete control over the default setting for the title tag, removal of the Joomla metatag, custom metadata fields plus Google cache and snippet control.
How does it work?In a similar way to the SEF Patch - everything is done through XML files. With 1.5 you can define custom fields into a separated XML file so that you extend the META fields. Where can I see this in action?If you want to test it by yourself see the SVN repository below (the changes aren't uploaded to 1.5 yet): http://www.joomlatwork.com/svn/joomla150_svn.zip
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Comments (15)
  written by Richard, July 22, 2007
Today I will update the latest SVN repository and have contact with Johan about the integration. The current RC1 is without this feature, but we focus on the RC2 that include this.
Richard written by Tom, July 22, 2007
This is a must for incorporation into joomla 1.5. I've just downloaded and installed rc1, impressed so far, can't wait to see these changes in the next rc! Good work.
written by Vinnce, July 24, 2007
We are all very suprised that RC1 has been released without these SEO Improvements.
Hopefully they can pull resources together to ensure it makes it into RC2 otherwise Joomla 1.5 will be criticised by many, and that really would be a shame for everyone. :-( - Vince written by Dick, August 01, 2007
I totally agree to Vince – all the amazing work of Joomla! 1.5, but what for? The whole routing thing is in a complete chaos and makes working with Joomla! 1.5 nearly impossible.
Every "read more" clicked on the frontpage displays it in /startpage/item instead of /section/category/item and, not to mention all the unwanted startpage modules that are displayed also in the single view via "read more", the url generated this way will be anything but permanent as soon as the content is no longer part of the start page. Please, try to change this as quick as possible. The in general aweson Joomla! deserves this. written by Andrew Eddie, August 05, 2007
Some feedback on tuning parameters for the other search engines would be useful at this time as we may need to look at a plugin system to be able to support more than just Google's preferred way. I think this would be more fruitful than lamenting over what RC it is or isn't in. Agree with you Aravot. Some of the best inclusions to the core code come from things that the community is playing with. Nice screenies; parts are easier to implement than others but worth looking at nonetheless - so parts would be achievable, others may require a bit of "how is this going to be scalable" investigation and so some harder things might need to be bounced to 1.6. Always a hard thing balancing several hundred thousand lines of code and everybody's pet wish list - but that's what managing an Open Source project is all about, hehe.
written by Vincer, August 14, 2007
"feedback on tuning parameters for the other search engines would be useful"
Hi Andrew, Must admit I'm confused by your reply. AFAIK, the requirement is not to concentrate purely on search engine friendly URL's but 'human friendly' URL's. By doing that, you automatically achieve best SEF solution for everyone - humans and engines. Then we hear all the mumbo jumbo about multiple ID's and different 'path' from the front page pointing to same article. Please stop doing this. It goes against the basic principles of logic. I am not a PHP coder, but cannot honestly understand why it's been resisted by core team for so long, or why the implementation in J1.5 has to be so difficult. My reasoning? Just look at how many individual SEF add-on projects. Surely the dev team has the skills to do same or better than these individual efforts, or recruit them for integrating as part of core. I thought THAT was what Open Source was all about? Love the Joomla project as a whole, but honestly lost far too much time and effort just taliking about things that other sucessfull Web applications have enjoyed for years. Best wishes, - Vince  written by steve, August 16, 2007
Hi Vince
Have you played around with the new URLs in 1.5? Not quite as flexible as Wordpress etc. but a big improvement. written by Les Faber, August 28, 2007
Steve - I think you just hit on the number 1 reason why Joomla! V1.5 needs a better SEF (HFU?) solution than previous versions currently have. WORDPRESS. The popularity that Wordpress enjoys is due in part to it's Search Engine friendliness. It is so darned easy to use and implement. Andrew states "Always a hard thing balancing several hundred thousand lines of code and everybody's pet wish list". I agree..... But if Joomla! is to be as widely used as Wordpress (for example), then it has to have SEO that works for people who do not know PHP. The SEF extensions out there today are better than the ones that were around 12 months ago. But we will not be there until SEF/SEO/HUF are an integral part of the core code, not an extension. BTW, Richard, it looks like you are doing an awesome job on 1.5!
 written by David Towers, September 11, 2007
This SEO module still hasn't been incorporated in 1.5 with RC2 has it!? Any news on whether it'll be in RC3 or the stable version?
written by vincer, September 27, 2007
Steve,
I have now played with 1.5 and the included SEF, and have found we can actually have any extension we wish on all pages  written by Paul Smith, October 08, 2007
Sad to say I have uploaded RC3 and find no SEO section in the Global Configuration. I have to assume that this means that the SEO section will not now be part of the stable version and so I think its time to leave Joomla and try something more suited to SEO.
Paul written by vincer, October 09, 2007
Oh dear. No sooner did the new core SEF have the facility to choose any extension, then it was taken away again - in fact, jinx has decided only 2 choices available now; with .html or no extension at all.
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=214609  written by Lever, December 13, 2007
...take the system-pagebreak feature and use it to add keywords and descriptions on a per page basis - generically giving the same kws/descriptions to every page in an article is part of the reason why Joomla fails on SEO where it could be a real champion.
written by Norman, January 11, 2008
Hi and thanks for this article.
It's pretty dated menawhile so does anyone know if this have fouind its way into the 1.5 core yet? Thanks. Write comment
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Change-log for the attached file in this blog is 7981 however current (07/17/07) SVN is 8019, is this going to be part of the Joomla core or an add-on hack?