Overview

This page lets you select when a rule is going to run. Rules can be executed for all pages or of only a limited set of pages.

When to enable the rule

On all pages

The rule will be executed without any condition, on all pages of the site.

Disable for now

The rule is entirely disabled and will never run. It is, however, preserved, and you can enable it back at any time.

With some conditions

The most powerful option: when you select it, more options will appear to let you define when the rule will run.

Run on these pages

The simplest and most powerful. Enter the address of the page(s) where this rule should run.

In its simplest form, just enter an exact URL, relative to the site, such as /blog/a-new-seo-extension: the rule you are preparing will only run on that exact page.

Now it becomes more interesting when you start using the {*} and {?} wildcard characters.

• {*} will match any string, from to 1 to many characters
• {?} will match any single characters

With these special strings, rules can run on a very specific set of pages. Here are a few examples:

/blog/{*}

Rule will run on all pages in the blog section but not others. For instance, it will run on /blog/new-seo-extension but not on /news/something-happened

/blog/{*}/seo/{*}

Rule will run on all pages within the blog section that are in the seo sub-section. For instance, it will run on /blog/joomla/seo/new-seo-extension but not on /blog/joomla/dev/modern-seo-extension

Regular expressions

You can also use regular expressions in the Run on these pages input by directly entering your regular expression in that field. You must however use the ~ character as your regular expression delimiter.

An example input would be: ~/contact-us/.*~

Setting up a rule for multiple pages

You also can make a single rule run for multiple pages, even if there is no common pattern where you can use wildcards characters, {*} and {?}.

This is done by listing these separate URLs, one per line. For instance, you can enter these various URLs where the rule should run:

and assuming the rule is a redirect, redirect all of them to /contact.

When using multiple URLs, you cannot use wildcards characters

As it would not be possible to manage all cases of using {*} and {?}, if you elect to create a rule wich runs on multiple URLs as in the screenshot above, you cannot use {*} or {?} anywhere in the Run on these pages field or on the What to do tab of the rule.

To use wildcard characters:

• list only one URL specification on Run on these pages field
• do not use wildcard characters in redirect or canonical target fields

Disregard query string

To decide whether this rule should run on the current page, 4SEO will compare the address of the page to your specification. When doing, this setting will decide whether the query string (the part after the ?) should be dropped before comparing.

Assume you have decided the rule should run on page: /blog/a-new-seo-extension

• If Disregard query string is Enabled, the rule will run for both /blog/a-new-seo-extension and /blog/a-new-seo-extension?fbclid=123465

• If Disregard query string is Disabled, the rule will still run for /blog/a-new-seo-extension but not on /blog/a-new-seo-extension?fbclid=123465 as that query string is not part of your specification.

Run for these languages

Directly select one or more of the Joomla languages you want this rule to run for.

Run for these components

Directly select one or more of the Joomla extensions you want this rule to run for.

Run for these categories

Directly select one or more of the Joomla categories you want this rule to not run for.

Do not run for these categories

Directly select one or more of the Joomla categories you want this rule to not run for.

If a category is listed in both Run for and Do not run for, it will be excluded.

Run based on custom field value

Custom fields are a very powerful feature of Joomla 3 and more recent, which you can use to attach your own data to content items.

4SEO lets you trigger any rule based on the actual value of a any custom field for the page being displayed.

This is done in 2 steps:

• chose wich custom field you want to use
• tell 4SEO for which value of the custom field the rule should run

4SEO offers a large list of comparison operators to chose from. However, not all of them make sense all the time. For instance, if you chose an Image field type, using a Greater than comparison does not really apply. 4SEO will try to make sense of it, but results may vary.

The custom field selector shows you all the custom fields defined on your site. You can type a few letters in the input field to quickly select the one you want.

Run rules between dates

You can instruct 4SEO to run this rule only after a specific date, until a specific date or between two dates.

Click and select a date in either field.

• If you pick a date in both fields, the rule will run between those dates.
• if you select only the first date, the rule will run after that date
• if you select only the second data, the rule will run until that date.