  Although we are reviewing OpenSEF because of its ability to create Search Engine Friendly URLs for Joomla, this extension has many more features.
This component is a whole suite of SEO tools that include scripts to create Google Site Maps, manage URLs for multiple sites and check for thing such as broken links, Google Page Rank and keyword density. Does such a wide-ranging feature set make OpenSEF the best choice for Joomla SEO, or does it simply make it bloated? Read our review and find out....
Background Open SEF began in August 2005, during the Mambo / Joomla split. It is based upon Xaneon Extensions, whose developers handed over the project. The Lead Developer is Marko Schmuck and the Project Adminstrator Ken McDonald.What Do the URLs Look Like?- /joomla-license.html
- /links/
- /component/option,com_search/Itemid,5/
How Do I Set Up This Option?Installation instructions are available at J-Prosolution.com.SupportPersonally, I've always found the Open SEF forums to be a great source of answers. The number of unanswered posts is low and the posts by Ken and Marko are valuable sources of information.
DevelopmentThere has been good and bad news in recent months. On the upside, the very talented team of Richard and John from Joomlatwork.com have joined the project. The downside is that Marko has been offline recently. The last version was released in June 2006 with a security patch following in July. The roadmap is available here.
Supported Components An official list doesn't exist but a forum for 3rd Party Extensions can be found here.Advantages- Its free.
- Low number of database queries.
- Caching. All URLs that are created are stored in the database for quick retrieval.
- Automatic redirects. Points all requests for non-SEF URLs to the SEF URL page.
- Ability to add date to the URL to make the site Google News friendly.
- Ability to overwrite URLs for all core components.
- Ability to generate Google XML Sitemaps.
- Consider it be a powerful SEO tool rather than just a SEF URL component. It also includes Google Page Rank Checker, a Link Popularity Checker, a Keyword Density Checker and a Metatag Generator
- Debugging by IP rather than for all visitors to the site.
Disadvantages- Redundancy. With a little bit of searching you can find better versions of the SEO tools elsewhere. Still, its nice to have them all in one place.
- Size Limitations. On large sites OpenSEF can slow down as all the URLs accumulate in the database.
- Some inflexibilities. Unable to completely remove section and category as is possible with Artio.
- Future Development. The OpenSEF team have done an enormous amount of good for the Joomla community and they do promise to restart development soon. However until that time, and without an update in 8-9 months, at least a small question mark must hang over the project in the minds of people considering OpenSEF for long-term use.
Overall Impression Open-SEF is clearly the most impressive of all three SEF URL components in terms of its available options and its range of features. Its Control Panel is about twice as large as Artio and SEF Advance put together. The question to consider is whether you need all those features. If you do, then Open SEF is a great choice. It runs quickly, it is compatible with a wide range of extensions and you can generate Google Sitemaps, metadata and custom URLs all from one place.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a simple plug-and-play SEF URL component then both SEF Advance and Artio are very close to Open SEF in quality, at least when it comes to small sites. Open SEF and SEF Advance are probably the better choice for larger sites with greater volumes of traffic.
Further Information | 
Comments
While this is true for the upcoming release (whenever that might happen), OpenSEF currently does have performance issues. If you have a site with hundreds or thousands of pages, the number of queries will slow things down considerably.
For reducing the number of queries, there are a few patches to be found on the OpenSEF forum that users have contributed. For the next release, Richard of joomlatwork.com has written a caching system that should speed things up for good.
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... and does so nicely with a 301. Plus, the ability to manually define any pretty URL and redirect it to any place within your site.
And the biggest plus for me is that it can remedy Joomla's ItemID issues by managing the multiple (duplicate content) URLs and redirecting those to *one* SEF URL respectively.
Personally I've had issues with the built-in sitemap generator when having my Joomla install in a subdirectory, that's why I prefer the excellent Joomap for Google sitemaps.
Additionally, OpenSEF has a multisite feature that is a bit tricky to setup and not very well documented. There are a few how-tos on their forum though.
The downside is indeed the slowness of development, which has recently led to considerable unrest among OpenSEF users.
Keep up the good work.
Kind regards,
Zorro
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Agreed - with other URL components, pages are still accessible via non-SEF URLs. This might not be a big problem if you set up SEF URLs before launching the site but it will always be bothersome.
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Agreed - the more I played with the extra tools on OpenSEF the more I came to think that they weren't really needed. It might be best to drop the multisite feature, sitemaps, SEO tools etc. and just concentrate on being a great SEF URL extension.
By the way - I had an email this morning that a fourth SEF URL is coming soon!
Now you've got me hooked!
Kind regards,
Zorro
I'm not sure if the developer wants to make his plans public yet...
I know he reads this blog though, so he's free to post details if he wishes
Steve
It doesn't have to be a date (a unique three digit number is good enough) but it makes sense to append the date rather than a meaningless number. See number 2:
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=40741
Just wanted to point out a big disadvengtage. Open SEF doesn't seem to be very friendly to 3rd party extensions such as our iJoomla Magazine. We had no problem with Artio and SEF advanced.
You can read more about this problem here:
http://www.ijoomla.com/Joomla_Magazine/Pre_Sales_Questions/Does_iJoomla_Magazine_Support_SEF?/
Cheers,
Merav
Founder
www.iJoomla.com
Thanks for pointing that out. The itemid really can be a pain in the butt but it looks like it comes to the rescue here.
I'm creating a list of which components work with which SEF URL components and I'll add iJoomla to that list: http://www.alledia.com/blog/joomla-urls/joomla-url-week-part-6-%11-conclusions/
Steve
May I ask which SEO tool you prefer and why.
I think something approaching a great list can be found here: http://tools.seobook.com/
Also check out the personal lists from Phil Braddock:
http://www.alledia.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-phil-braddock-from-salsainternet.com.au/
and Barrie North:
http://www.alledia.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-barrie-north-of-joomlashack.com/
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