I Just replaced the old OpenSEF component with the new sh404SEF component to improve my total Search Engine Optimization efforts for this website.

It wasn't as straight formward as you might think... I did try before and failed, then I made the move back to OpenSEF.
Not this time however, I wanted it to work...!!

So here is what you might do if you want to do the same switch:

- backup your database first, even better, backup the whole site that is good practice anyway :-)

- Go into the administrator panel and clean all Friendly URL's from OpenSEF via the configuration.

- clean all the cache files, I my case the chache pages in the cache component and the Joomla cache as well.

- deinstall OpenSEF.

- Install sh404SEF, and activate it and set the same configuration options as you had in OpenSEF, see if it works, not only the frontend, but also the pages in the main menu.

- If not, go back into sh404SEF and disable cache for now in the advanced configuration section, clean the SEF urls and try again.

- check your .htacces file to make sure it has the same content as you can find in the sh404SEF documentation, which is in the same control panel on your administrator section.

if you checked and where needed fixed these items, you should have a working SEF website again.

Now comes the big question... go into google and do a search of which you know you have a good ranking...(you should now this form your statistics program like statcounter) find your link and click it.
You should now see the right page of your site again!
If not, go back into sh404SEF and make sure you set your configuration right!

For this site, in OpenSEF and sh404SEF the configuration was set to use the categorie, the title of the article and use of .html as extension.
You should set the options in sh404SEF the same as in OpenSEF to prevent los of Search Engine Page results.

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