The Forgotten Joomla SEF Component

I was looking at one of my clients Mambo based website, to see what it would take to move it to Joomla.
Main reason for this was that the Administrator Interface of version 4.5.x breaks the menu in Internet Explorer 7.

One of the Components I used on this site was Remosef, a special, but very stable SEF Component.
So I thought I would check if there was an update for version 4.6 if that transition would be easier than the conversion to Joomla..

But there was a nice surprise from Martin Brampton…

The Remosef for Joomla Component

As it turns out, Martin has created a SEF Component upgrade for Joomla 1.0.x version.
And since I liked the stability and simplicity of the old Remosef for Mambo component I put it into a test for you.

Now this is not a special technical test, like seeing how much queries and processing time this component takes, you have task other people how it preforms in that area.
For me the simplicity and workability counts, it should be as easy as possible for you.

Normally the installation of the component is just enough, with some alterations in the standard Joomla .htaccess to make sure you can use Third party SEF Components.

For the optimum results of this component, there is an extra step to take, but that is not that hard to do.

Installing the Component

Like I said, step one is always downloading the component and reading the information and installation instructions.
You follow Download the Remosef Component to get the file…
But make sure you also Download the SEF Modules, you will need them later on.

“Caution…. don’t install this component, or any other component on a website that is already in the search engine indexes!”
Remosef is the Only site that has a warning like this, and some thoughts on duplicate content as well…. good thinking..
But of you have I website with the standard Joomla SEF URLs, you might reconsider :-)

Installation of the component is just like any other component, just by using the Component Installer of Joomla, point it to the .zip file and “Upload and Install” basically you are done after you made the changes to the .access file and upload it to the root.

You have to set the options in the .htaccess file to get the Third party SEF components to run, but you have to add an extra line at the end of the file, just as explained on the remosef site:
RewriteRule ^(content/|component/|jos/) index.php

Last step is to unzip the module file, and upload the files via FTP, directories are already made, so you can FTP it in one session.
These modules make sure that you get the best result from the rewrites done by the component.

Configuration of the SEF Component

Now here is why I like the component…
If you check the administration panel of the component, there is just one page.

The page consist of a few sections:

Remosef Options
Component name mappings
Character translations
Content tasks translations

That’s it..

Look at the Remosef options:

Remosef Options

Normally after installation the SEF prefix says “jos” but you might not want that in your URL, do you?
So you can change it to something like “site”, but if you do this, you also have to match that in you .htaccess file!
For this option it would become:
RewriteRule ^(content/|component/|sites/) index.php

The second option you should always set to “yes” since hyphens do better in SEO than underscores.

The Component name mappings:

Remosef Component settings

As you can see, you can set any name for the normal and extra components to be rewritten to whatever you like…
And yes, I have to correct the Typo in Technical Articles…

The Character translations options are specifically for Foreign languages to rewrite things like ö and ü to “oe” en “ue”

Content task translations

You can rewrite every content name with anything you like:
You could do only one here, if you don’t like the “view” in you URL, you could use “pages”instead.

Remosef Content Translation

With all the settings you could set in the manner as described, you would get URLs like:

http://www.example.com/site/pages/General/General/Information-on-Opensource-and-Internet-Resources/

Notice the Upper and Lower text? Remosef takes the exact phrase of you title!

If you use the standard after installation you would have seen example.com/jos/view/ instead of example.com/site/pages/

If you know Logout, you get an error… because of the rewrite.. You also get an error if you want to use the “preview”option form you administrator panel.
Don’t worry, its just those two, and its because the index.php isn’t used anymore because of the rewrite function.

Why I like it?

Because it works that simple.. and because it the most stable SEF component I know, next to SEF Advanced.
And it works with all SEF_extend.php that are compatible with SEF Advanced.

I am currently in the process of setting up an new website with this component, once its loaded with content and gets indexed by Google, I will post the results and look if it works like I think it will.
And although it says its in “Beta” I have found no errors yet.

And here is another nice part.. it has its own Joomla 404 errorpage… and you can modify it as well.
Test revealed you get a standard Error 404 from IE7, but the modified page from Firefox, but with the right 404 Not Found headers.. whohaa!!!

So if you are looking for a SEF Component for your Joomla based website, don’t forget to check Remosef for Joomla