I will preface this by saying I'm somewhat new to Joomla extensions, I'm but no means a web developer.

I paid $35 USD to download this component and was disappointed by its lack of documentation. At least on my site, it wasn't ready to go upon installation.

I had to make changes to my security levels via the FTP site so it would view properly in the Joomla admin area. I had to rename the htaccess file ".htaccess" and save it to the Joomla root directory. I followed what few instructions were available to me as best I could, and finally I gave up on this component after 5 or 6 hours of frustration and little progress.

I found ARTIO JoomSEF to be much easier to use right out of the box. That component configured and renamed my .htaccess file automatically, and I'm able to make custom SEF URLS. In literally minutes, I was up and running.

The research I did said I was to htaccess file and rename it to .htaccess and save it in the Joomla root directory. Easy enough, but

After a year of struggling with this product, I was happy to see that it went commercial, because I figured it meant that they would acknowledge and fix the only major flaw of which I am aware...

... the core of sh404sef will break your pagination in azrul.com MyBlog component. I have found work around for all other issues using these two otherwise great components together, but for whatever reason the sh404sef people refuse to acknowledge and fix this problem.

The really frustrating thing is that the sh404sef component comes with built in "support" for MyBlog, so is very misleading. Now that the product is commercial, it should come with a disclaimer that it will break your site if you want to use MyBlog along with it.

You would think that the MyBlog and sh404sef people would get together and figure this out, but the problem has been known for months.

It comes down to this... if you don't use MyBlog, then sh404sef is a great component and does exactly what it says. If you do use MyBlog or think you might ever want to, then stay far away from sh404sef unless and until the company acknowledges and fixes the problem.

A word of advice to azrul... it would be very helpful if you would offer the sh404sef team a copy of MyBlog, because the sh404sef people seem to have used the lack of access to MyBlog as a reason not to support it.

I submitted a question to the forms quite a while ago with absolutely no reasonable response. The import function does not work properly as I have reported.

THIS USED TO BE A GREAT EXTENSION WITH SUPERIOR SUPPORT BEFORE IT WAS SOLD TO ANYTHING-DIGITAL.COM.

This type of vendor is what gives Joomla a bad name.

I use to recommend to all of my clients, you must get sh404SEF, the best component out there, but not any more. It seems that when you use the later versions with MyBlog, you do not get any Page Titles showing, a major SEO factor.

Seems people have been asking for and complaining about it for over a year now. Funny thing is it use to work just fine. I have read through their forums, with no luck except basically pointing the figner at the MyBlog developer. Funny thing is it works without sh404sef installed... go figure.

Next is a major problem with CB installed, seems that there is a problem that cause registration to become restricted....

I would say stay clear of this product until they get it working the way it is suppose to.

For me, I am going to request a refund, since I can not get an answer to the forum and they have no real support on the site for these issues...

Here is what the site says when you go to download it:
Support: Anything Digital offers these product ‘as is’, with no implied meaning that they will function exactly as you wish or with all 3rd party components and modules. Further, we offer no support via email or otherwise for installation, customization, administration of Joomla etc. A forum is available to subscribers for community-based support. Anything Digital does not commit to monitor these forums, but we reserve the right to respond and answer questions.

So why even bother............

FOR SHAME

I am very happy with this product and the $35 was worth it. I had problems with my .htaccess files using mod_rewrite and after 10 minutes with the documentation, I had my problem solved. Now my site has the most beautiful URLs!

Still love this component and don't really care to much about the $'s. To much ;) The latest version has much improved my mysterous 404's and seem to be a little better performing.

The only reason I did not give it a 5 is the plugin management is sort of a pain. They seem to know this and hopefully a new version soon will fix this.

Excellent!

I thought this was going to be a hard install, but ended up being a breeeeeeeze.

This is a must have, and will now be an instant install on any of my new Joomla! websites.

Just read the installation instructions carefully and you will be fine.

A+

Dallas

I gotta tell you - this product absolutely saved me. I had been struggling with native SEF and was getting nowhere. Decided to try this product and had my site setup exactly how I wanted it in about 15 minutes. Thanks for an excellent easy to use product. Your a lifesaver.

sh404sef is always one of the first extensions I install on a joomla site. Although, I was sad to see it go commercial, I definitely understand because a lot of time goes into making sh404sef I'm sure. It's definitely worth the small amount they're charging. And in response to an earlier comment, I'm using this extension on an IIS server and it works great! If you use Helicon's Isapi_Rewrite (free or commercial version) you can even use the .htaccess without index.php. When using isapi_rewrite you must add


if ( isset( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_X_REWRITE_URL' ] ) )
{
$_SERVER[ 'REQUEST_URI' ] = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REWRITE_URL' ];
}

to the beginning of your index.php file for it to work. This detail had me tripped up for a while. I would have given an excellent rating but sometimes I do have strange things happen, for instance, out of the blue on occasion my homepage will return a 404 error. Purging the 404 logs always fixes it and it may be something I have setup wrong???

I've been using this component for years and always been very happy with it. Features are excellent and plugin capability is fantastic but I was a little disappointed to find out you now have to register to download effectively making it a commercial product. This must be a fairly recent change and I suppose I can understand the need to make some money to pay for the servers but I much prefer to donate to projects I like. Perhaps an old copy could still have been left on the forge but I see all files have been removed there too.

Anyway, besides that, as I've already said an excellent component and not a bad price for the yearly subscription so I would say it's still worth paying for. Combined with the VirtueMart plugin there's nothing better out there that I have found.

I agree, this is very usefull extension, on some servers and some condition. On free hosting servers there is no way to force this extension to work. And suport for other extension is uncomplete. Forums are overloaded with asking for help for this extension. I made 12 sites, and they working more than exelent, afret instalig of sh400SEF, they been crushed, at least they did not worked well. But, who I´m I to judge, I´m just simple and small joomla user!

Ok, I'm rating sh404SEF as excellent event if I found and fixed bugs, because for such a good work, a few bugs are acceptable and...give me the name of even one software wich is bug free !

And ok, it's not a component for newbies, it's not always working out-of-the-box, it needs tuning and plugins etc.

I'm using sh404SEF not only for rewritting url but olso for security. It's very usefull to track attacks and to block IP adresses.

The component is still supported and maintained, please have a look at the hosting website.
Yannick is still at work ! Thanks to you Yannick and to anything-digital !