I have been using this extension for almost a year and I must say that the extension works as expected on sites that are hosted on Apache.
When it comes to NGINX, the extension does not work and the support is not helpful at all. Very poor customer service.
I recommend this extension for Apache users as there will hardly be any need for support however if you are using NGINX, please proceed with caution.
Owner's reply:
Hi
Sorry that support could not help you setup your web server. Indeed, that's usually a bit out of scope for us, as it requires full access to server. Besides we're php developers, not system administrators!
However, regarding Nginx, I can only tell you this: since 2006, sh404SEF has been developed and tested using ONLY nginx (back then it was version 0.5.35 :) ) on a daily basis.
Nginx is the only web server I use - and love, so I'm positive it works, and that's also why we do publish on our site a sample configuration file for it.
Please come back to us if you want to give it another try.
Rgds
... but than it was sold to a company and went "paid" which usually results in even better support, not here though.
The 404 log of sh404sef comes in handy and the rewriting and redirecting works as long as you have only a few extensions installed and ALL bring their own sh404 plugin. So it does not work e.g. with jDownloads or Akeeba Release System.
But the utter no go is the multilingual mess. Since 2011 they try to solve this bug of the missing "item associations" and as of today no solution in sight. In their forum threads they write "we are working on a solution" ... and then lock the thread and put "answered" in the heading.
Conclusion: works well on simple sites although it comes with a whopping price tag, stay away definitely for multilingual websites.
Owner's reply:
Hi Carin,
I have to say your review is very confusing. Usually I try to identify what the problem a user is facing and respond to that, but in this case, I can only see erroneous statements:
The most important to me maybe: sh404SEF has NEVER BEEN SOLD to anyone. I started this project at the end of 2006 and 7 1/2 years later it's me doing all design and development (aside from contributed translations). I don't know where you get that information, but it's not correct.
Next is sh404SEF plugins: having a custom sh404SEF is NOT required for any extension. sh404SEF happily uses any extension router.php file. Of course, having a custom sh404SEF plugin allows creating much better urls.
Then multilingual: maybe the most puzzling: in 2011, there was no "item associations" in Joomla. They were introduced in Joomla 3.0.2 in november 2012. When sh404SEF for J! 3.x was released, it worked fine with them, as with previously available menu item associations, and has been working fine since.
Again, not sure where you got that information.
Multilingual support is extremely important to me, actually that's the reason sh404SEF was started, when there was no SEF extension handling Joomfish, back in Joomla 1.0 times. I'm also developing Josetta for Joomla! M.L. sites
Rgds
This extension gave me more headaches than profit. I had to remove it to in order to get other extensions to work.
URL management: standard Joomla SEF and .htaccess give the same result.
Alias management and 404 request: standard Joomla redirection manager does a good job too
shURL: usability not clear
Title & meta: makes it more complicated in Joomla. Use standard Joomla functions in stead.
Analysis: never got it working in Joomla 3.2.2, support gave up about this item.
Safety: may be the only benefit, no experience with this though.
404 page: only works if you don't set one component to joomla router.
Social SEO: poorly implemented, alternative free extensions work better
Most functionality is already present in Joomla 3.2.2 or can be implemented with little effort. Added functions don’t work well, alternative free extensions work better. Safety may be the only benefit. Support could be better.
Owner's reply:
Hi,
You do seem to have had a bad experience with sh404SEF, let me provide a bit more details at least on two extremely important things:
- "standard Joomla SEF and .htaccess give the same result" simply put: No
If you look superficially, yes, you get SEF urls with Joomla, and you get SEF urls with sh404SEF. But they are totally not the same, especially in keys SEO areas. sh404SEF are usually much shorter (no categories, or only one), much more to the point (no ids) but most importantly and I agree that's not easy to see: sh404SEF controls duplicate content on your site, while Joomla menu-based urls can only create duplicate content.
- support didn't give up on your issue with analytcs. You're one of two users with this problem. So far, we haven't managed to reproduced it on any of our servers, and we still don't know what's causing the problem, whether sh404SEF or not. Investigation is happening, and if the problem is with us, it'll be fixed.
On the lighter side:
- 404 page: yes, using Joomla router, you get Joomla! 404 page; using sh404SEF, you get sh404SEF page - which I do believe brings good marketing value to your site
- title and metas: a matter of taste and usage, I think. Many, many people prefer to have all meta data in one place, and the ability to override titles and description for multiple site pages on the same page
Most importantly, with sh404SEF, you specify metadata per URL, not per article, products, categories.
URLs are what's visible to search engines, not Joomla articles (see point 1 about menu-based urls used by Joomla)
- shUrl: not sure I understand your comment. sh404SEF provides a built in URL shortener, so that you don't have to rely on external service. Your site is doing the shortening, and so your urls are www.mysite.com/xc3 for instance.
Rgds
We created a site using joomla and CMGroupBuying.
We attempted to install sh404SEF AFTER the site was set up, operational, and we had been using the "redirect" plugin.
It absolutely DID NOT integrate well at all. None of the already programmed redirected urls worked...and there were just too many 404 pages coming up to be dealt with.
This program is one of those things "I wish I had installed before creating the rest of my website" because maybe then it would have worked...but as it stands, it does NOTHING for our site and we have uninstalled it completely.
Owner's reply:
Hi
Sorry for your bad experience. Indeed, installing ANY SEF extension after your site has launched and has been crawled by search engines requires some work.
Namely, those urls that are modified by the new extensions needs to be redirected to new ones.
That can be done either in a .htaccess file, or using sh404SEF built in redirection management.
However, I can already tell that from next version, sh404SEF will also check Joomla! own redirect manager database table in case some redirects have been stored there previously
Thanks and regards
The tool seems to do a very good job of helping to get rid of those thousands of pages of duplicate content. But there's one major thing about the way it works that should absolutely be covered in the documentation about how to use the product.
The second you turn on the product, all knowledge that google and other search engines have of your site is essentially gone. All URLs that are correct the moment before you turn on the product will get 404s the moment you enable SEF URLs. The tool a "404 request manager" to show you all the 404s that your site is now generating, and allows you to do 301 redirects from each old page to each new page. But:
1. You have to do it one URL at a time. Each URL takes three clicks and then you have to wait for that one to complete before you can go on to another. If you have 100s of pages of content, you're going to be there a while.
2. The documentation mentions that you need to watch the 404 request manager, but it says that you should only be getting those if you have "bad links" or "update links," making it seem like it's your fault that you have them. It says nothing about all of the links in Google that are now bad because you just changed all your URLs.
They know each old page; they know each new page. What's stopping them from putting in a 301 redirect from each old one to each new one?
FWIW, I confirmed this behavior via support:
Owner's reply:
Hi
Thanks for you report. We have modified documentation to make the fact that URLs are modified - but this is kind of the point of getting a SEF extension! - clearer.
I do want to point out though that contrary to what you say, we have no idea what the old urls were, as they are made on the fly by Joomla and not store anywhere.
Whenever possible, we do try to auto-redirect from old to new, and that's enabled by default for sites previously using non-sef urls.
For sites running Joomla SEF urls, that's much more difficult because of high risks of "collision" between and is disabled by default, but can be enabled in configuration.
Rgds
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