Welcome to the Joomla SEO Club and Book

In the third part of our series on optimizing Joomla's URLs, we're going to take a look at Artio SEF.

Artio is the new kid on the block, having been in the hands of its current developers for less than a year. It has quickly earned a strong following with nearly 50 reviews on Joomla.org making it among the most talked-about extensions around.

Background

What Do the URLs Look Like?

• /joomla-license-guidelines-2.html
• /contact-us/index.php
• /search.html
  

How Do I Set Up This Option?

Support

Reasonable and certainly as much as can be expected from developers of a free component. There are a lot of unanswered posts on the support forums, but the extension seems to be becoming very popular, creating a large number of support requests.

Development

Development has been active with a new version released every month on average. See the changelog here.

Supported Components

Advantages

• Its free for the basic component, although you do need to buy extensions for certain 3rd party extension such as HotProperty, Sobi2, Virtuemart and the SMF Bridge.
• Removing the section and category from the URL to make the page appear closer to the root is possible with Artio.
  
• Some SEF scripts developed for Open-SEF and SEF Advance can be used with Artio.
  
• Creates 404 error logs so you can see where you may have broken incoming links and possible errors on your site.
• Allows custom redirects.
• Works on Window servers!
• Works well with Joomfish.
• It comes with an excellent default set-up. It uses dashes instead of underscores and automatically maps all core components to short and sweet URLs such as /search.html.
• Producing clean URLs without the odd characters such as % ` $ & that are produced by other SEF components.
  

Disadvantages

• Heavy server usage. This can become a serious problem on large sites and so Artio SEF maybe more appropriate for smaller websites. One test I ran produce the following results:
• Default Joomla site : 36 database queries
• Artio SEF : 164 queries
• OpenSEF : 68 queries
• 63 with SEF Advance.
  
• No caching of URLs. This means longer load times and more queries.
  
• No debugging function.
  
• Upgrade difficulties. When upgrading, you need to export all your settings, delete the component, install the update and then reimport your settings again. That said, Artio promise that normal upgrade utility will be available soon.
• The free version comes with an advertisement for Artio and its partners in the metadata. You can remove this have to pay to remove this. Find out more at the Artio site and on the Joomla.org forums.
  

Overall Impression

Out of the three SEF extensions we'll be looking at this week, I was least familiar with Artio but I have to say I was impressed. It is a mature and stable extension that is very user-friendly. Artio was remarkably straightforward to install and the default setting showed a good understanding of SEO. I also really appreciate the fact that the Artio developers are trying to utilize SEF scripts designed for OpenSEF and SEF Advance. One of the restrictions with all three of Joomla's SEF extensions is that they only work with a limited number of components. It is good to see Artio working towards more cross-fertilization of development.

Artio doesn't have any features that are unavailable with Open-SEF or SEF Advance but it does a good job of being a solid, all-round SEF URL component.

There are two major drawbacks. One is the large number of database queries it needs to make. Because of this I would recommend Artio be used on relatively low-traffic sites until the problem is fixed. Given that development is active and the developers are well aware of this problem, its reasonable to assume that the number of queries will be reduced in future versions.

The other is the advertising links that will be added to your metadata. If you do use Artio SEF, be sure to download the SEF file here to remove any extra links hurting your SEO.

Further Information

• Click here to download Artio SEF
• Official Support Forum
  
• Reviews on Joomla.org
• Joomla.org discussion about advertising in metadata
  

Screenshots

Comments (7)

...
written by Zorro, April 02, 2007

One of the problems with all three of Joomla's SEF extensions is that they only work with a limited number of components.

That's true, but it's not the SEF extensions' fault: With Joomla's architecture it is the component developers who need to supply an interface via the sef_ext.php file so that the SEF extensions can use it.

Some SEF scripts developed for Open-SEF and SEF Advance can be used with Artio.

I take that to read "there is very limited compatibility with sef_ext.php files that were made for OpenSEF and SEF Advance".

I noticed this myself when taking Artio for a quick test run: It didn't utilize AlphaContent's sef_ext file correctly and so it was gone from my server quickly. Also, the spammy links and the queries issue don't make Artio a viable choice for me.

Now if only OpenSEF were a multi-person project so it could advance more quickly.

...
written by steve, April 02, 2007

Hi Zorro

You really picked up on what I also feel are the key points.

That's true, but it's not the SEF extensions' fault: With Joomla's architecture it is the component developers who need to supply an interface via the sef_ext.php file so that the SEF extensions can use it.

I don't want to give too much away before publishing the conclusions I reached after doing this study, but this problem is central and I'll talk about some potential solutions.

Now if only OpenSEF were a multi-person project so it could advance more quickly.

This leads to one of potential solutions More on Friday...

...
written by Brian Teeman, April 03, 2007

The inclusion of spam metadata in this extension makes it a complete no no for me. Whilst it is true that I can hack the extension to remove them each time a new version is released (ie every month) I will need to hack this again, and again and again.

This sort of spam should be discouraged

Excellent component
written by Ian Wright, May 21, 2007

The inclusion of spam metadata in this extension makes it a complete no no for me. Whilst it is true that I can hack the extension to remove them each time a new version is released (ie every month) I will need to hack this again, and again and again

That's not true, the only spam which is found in this component is the free version. The commercial version which is less than the cost of a Sunday dinner, completely spam/advert free and great for any commercial website.

I find it a little strange how people charge money to produce a website but then will complain if they have to pay for the bits to make it!!

So does that mean the component developer should work for free to allow you to charge your client money.

Pay for the component and help the component developer excellent work.

This sort of spam should be discouraged

I think this mentality should be discouraged

Great work Steve for the review and Artio for a fine component.

Joomla SEF URL's
written by Trond, August 03, 2007

I have been using Artio JoomSEF for a couple of months and is a happy user - but a bit dissapointed of all the duplicate URL's generated.

There should be a automatic block function for this.

Version 2.2.1 fixes a lot of ills, including duplicate URLs
written by mantis108, October 18, 2007

You should definitely get the latest 2.2.1 version if you're using 1.5x.. it is MUCH better. Fixed the duplicate URL issues and several others for us. Still not perfect, but a lot closer.

spam-free JoomSEF available
written by Joly, October 28, 2007

URL caching in the latest version is great. Also has fixed dupe link issues, now it's almost as good as sh404SEF. You can get a spam-free JoomSEF from kangainternet.com/downloads.html

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