Finding the Right Joomla SEF Component!

Posted by Matt - January 2, 2008 on 2:42 pm | In Joomla SEF | No Comments

Joomla has become an extremely popular Content Management System. Hundreds of thousands of website owners around the world are currently using it.

I have sort of a love - hate relationship with Joomla. Just like any computer program, when its running “right” I love it. But when it starts giving me errors and “messing up” Joomla can become annoying fast.

My problems with Joomla have generally though NOT been with the program itself, but with the components and extensions (modules, components, mambots) that are used to extend or include things like calendars, payment gateways, etc. into the default Joomla install.

Of all the components that have caused me the most grief while designing websites at WCZone, its the SEF (search engine friendly) components that have been the most aggravating. Some of the problems include:

1. Duplicate URLS (some produced 5 or more urls for the same page. Duplicate pages hurts your efforts to get your website ranked high in google and other search engines).

2. Problems with the “look” of the site. Many times Open-Sef and others resulted in certain published modules not appearing correctly, or even at all, on pages. (Modules contain the content on a Joomla webpage. While the main content was always there, the content in the side column modules just wouldn’t be there. This often entailed deleting the current sef urls, and rebuilding.

I have used Open-Sef (now called NuSef), JPromoter, JoomSef (by Artio), sh404SEF and many others. They all fell short of what I needed. I struggled for a long time with Open-SEF but have finally given up because there is no longer a developer to keep the product updated and it has way too many “bugs” and glitches. JPromoter has its own set of problems: not finding all urls, permission problems, and worst, not being able to upgrade the product (technically the only way to upgrade JPromoter is to delete the component, then re-install the new version. This means thought that ALL the previous SEF urls are lost. This is not a big deal for a small site with 7 or 8 links, but for a bigger site that could mean (and has meant) many hours updating the links by hand.

Currently, the best product I have tried is a spinoff of Artio’s JoomSEF. Its by a company called Kanga Internet and is called “JoomSef - Patched Version.” One of the problems with the original version of JoomSEF is that it contains a boatload of “spam” links and text that is automatically inserted by the component into each and every Joomla page. This very likely could and will hurt your efforts to increase the ranking of your website with Google and other search engines (you really, really, want your website to appear on the first page of search results to be seen…).

JoomSEF - Patched version is identical to JoomSEF except it does not have the spam and bad links. Is it a perfect search engine friendly optimization component for Joomla? No, but its pretty darn close!

If you have any questions on Joomla, SEO, SEF Urls, or a Web Design question, please fill out the contact form above… the folks here at WCZone would love to help you.