| What Everyone Needs to Know About SEF URL Components |
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| Friday, 09 February 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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One of the questions I get asked most frequently during SEO work is, "Which component should I use for search engine-friendly URLs with Joomla?"
Its not easy for many people to understand the differences between them and to my knowledge no-one has currently written an adequate comparison of all three (if they have - I'll be happy to link to it, if they haven't - I'll write one for an upcoming post).
So, without a detailed list of the pros and cons, and assuming that price is not an obstacle, how can you decide between these three?
Its simple - there is no right answer for every site: Your SEF URL choice should be decided by your key component.
SEF solutions work by adding an extra file called "sef_ext.php" to each component. Unfortunately an sef_ext.php that works for one solution may not work for others. That means that Community Builder would need three different files to enable it to work with each SEF URL solution. Needless to say most developers can't keep up with all three, and the writers of the SEF URL solutions can't keep up with the multitude of new components being released. Inevitably your choice won't work with all the components you use, so you need to focus on the functionality that is most important to you.
For example, SEF Advance produces great URLs for Community Builder, but Open-SEF is a much better choice for Virtuemart. Neither of them work well for Joomlaboard or the SMF bridge and so if you have an important forum you need ArtioSEF.
In short, if you're building a social networking site, use SEF Advance, if you're building an ecommerce site, use Open-SEF, if your forum will be key, use Artio SEF and so on....
The following is a work in progress, that will help people work out which components are compatible with SEF URL solutions. There may be mistakes and there are definitely plenty of exclusions, so feel free to post more details in the comments section and I'll add them to this table. As time goes on, I'll also be working on adding more components and more details:
SEF URL Components and Comptabile Extensions
Links to the SEF solutions' own lists of components they are compatible with:
Link to a comparison of MySQL queries made by the different components (disclaimer - written by one of the OpenSEF developers):
Comments (11)
  written by steve, February 09, 2007
Thanks Zorro - I'll add that to the table and also give it a quick test with ArtioSEF.
 written by Aaron Handford, February 11, 2007
Gwen is working on an exciting new SEF URL option for Vmart- see it here:
http://virtuemart.net/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=71&topic=23392.0 written by Azzam Sheikh, February 11, 2007
I am pretty sure moset tree works for open-sef. There was an ongoing debate over it for a while of the Joomla and open-sef forum. But Lee do provide sef compliant codes for moset tree and I did use it, however do not have the details to hand. This forum should assist for the latest version moset tree 1.59:
http://forum.j-prosolution.com/3pd-components/2478-list-components-not-working-other-bugs.html written by steve, February 11, 2007
I don't know whether it was before or after this article was posted but Emir has added a list of components that SEF is compatible with to his website. I've found similar lists for Artio and Open-SEF and linked to them all.
Maybe one day, we'll be able to drop this complexity and end up with one outstanding solution for all components  Hi Brian...interesting thread. Seems like hidden advertising is a topic coming up every few months with one component or another. Aaron - that VM solution promises to be great. Any idea of a release date? Hi Azzam....MosTree and Open-SEF.... I could never get it to work properly. I'll look into that again.  written by Brian Teeman, February 12, 2007
Yes hidden advertising is a real issue right now. I'm sick of seeing it. There is no need for it. Template designers dont need to hide links back to their sites (plenty do this with hidden divs) and component developers hsould not place hidden links in their code. hint Check out the title of your pages not just the display areas
written by Bjorn A. Solstad, May 24, 2007
The fact is that all the sef-variations suffers on different aspects, and the end of the story is that none of the current solutions are really solutions. They are all half-solutions, that works in some scenarios, and messes up everything (the url's) in others.
The total lack of standardisation in Joomla (1.0.x series) has created a nightmare for any site owner that takes SEO seriously. I am working on solving the issues on a client's site that is very typical at the moment. The story goes like this: He had JoomSEF working fairly well (Joomla and Virtuemart) on his previous host. Then he had to move because of performance issues with the host. On the new server we got everything working except JoomSEF (apparently compatibility issues). So, we had to switch over to Sef Advance. SA worked fairly well except for the Virtuemart part. Serveral big issues with it apparently. So, here we are with a partly working setup - as it has been always with Joomla and proper url's. I really, really hope they have solved these issues in Joomla 1.5 when it is released, because this is driving many developers mad! written by steve, May 24, 2007
Hi Bjorn
You're right - the current SEF components are only very partial fixes. The only real solution can come from core changes to Joomla. The good thing is that the developers are working hard on this and seriously thinking about SEO issues: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,140836.0.html written by Rob Christiansen, October 11, 2007
Any news on the availability of an Artio SEF extension for Community Builder?
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Kind regards.