Review of the SEF Patch for Joomla 1.5

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Feb

2008

Review of the SEF Patch for Joomla 1.5

Written by Steve Burge

Joomla SEF Patch If you've been reading this blog for more than a few days, you'll know I strongly recommend two components to improve SEO on Joomla 1.0:

sh404SEF from extensions.siliana.net
SEF Patch from joomlatwork.com ( winner of an "Extension of the Month" award last year )

The good news is that one of those has just been updated for Joomla 1.5. This is our review of the new SEF Patch.

Installation

The patch is similar to the free version for 1.0 rather than the extended version. Instead of installing it like a component, you'll need to use FTP to manually overwrite the files. No backups are created, so if you make a mistake, you'll need to download the original files and reupload.

Why no automatic installation? The SEF Patch was designed to be part of the core release of 1.5 rather than an extra component.

Using the Patch

You'll see changes to Joomla 1.5 in three places:

In Site >> Global Configuration, a new tab called "SEO". This controls the metadata options for the whole site.
Inside each article, a greatly expanded "Metadata Information" section. This allows unique HTML titles for each article.
Inside each menu link, a new field called "MENU item meta data". This permits unique metadata for any menu link on the site.

What's Missing from the 1.0 SEF Patch

Only a couple of items haven't made the transition and that is largely because this is a true patch and no longer a component:

The "Overview URL repository", which allowed metadata to be applied to any page on your site.
Ignore lists for common words you don't want in metadata: "a, an, are, as, at, be, by, etc..."

Conclusion

The SEF Patch is as essential for 1.5 as it was for 1.0. Its free, stable, easy to use and doesn't interfere with other extensions. There is no other way to fully control metadata on your site. That may change as other SEO components are released for 1.5, but I fully expect to still be recommending the SEF Patch for many months to come.

Find Out More

Screenshots of the New Patch

{gallery}15stablepatch{/gallery}

Comments

#1 Klaus Nitsche 2008-02-11 01:53

Yeah ... bit hard to understand why such basic functionality is still missing in J 1.5. This patch, and SmartSEF which is aiming for a stable release around March, are the things that make Joomla 1.5 production ready. Out of the box, it isn't, at least not for professional purposes, with regards to SEO.

Kind regards,
Zorro

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#2 Yannick Gaultier 2008-02-12 05:15

Hi Steve and all,

I have a question for you regarding the patch and Joomla 1.5. One of the patch features is to change the page headers. Specifically, it will change the Expires.... header date from Joomla default to something current.
Joomla default was in 1.0.x and is still in 1.5, to set an Expires date in the past. Joomlatwork seems to say that's no good (and that make sense to me !). I looked up that code in J! 1.5, and it seems to be made very deliberatly, there is even a comment : Set Expires to date in the past. Do you know why Joomla core team insists on setting this date in the past ? surely there is a rationale behind it ? (I know would be better to ask them, but I feel my chances to get an answer is higher here !)

Thanks and regards
Yannick

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#3 Klaus Nitsche 2008-02-12 05:53

Hi Yannick,

I can only make an educated guess. By setting the cache headers to a past date, you make the web page "uncacheable", meaning that external caches will always request the most recent version of the page. This is probably to make sure that, for instance, AOL users (who used to be forced behind AOL's proxy servers - is it still that way nowadays?) always get the to see the current page.

Kind regards,
Zorro

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