Hi
1 - For an existing site, you don't really "switch" as they don't cover the same areas, although there are some overlaps. The main difference is that 4SEO is not concerned with URLs. It won't change your site URLs, won't let you customize them, etc.
So on a site with sh404SEF, possible scenariis are:
- you use sh404SEF mostly for SEF URLs, meta are handled through Joomla: disable sh404SEF SEO management and use 4SEO on top (for structured data, sitemap, content replacement, social networks).
- you use sh404SEF for SEF URLs and meta data handling: use 4SEO on top for the extra features (structured data, sitemap, content replacement, social networks)
What will happen when Joomla 4 is stable is we will have another extension, likely called 4SEF, which will handle only the SEF URLs parts. Basically sh404SEF with only the SEF URLs part and all SEO-related features handled by 4SEO. A better separation of concerns.
4SEF will run on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4, like 4SEO and will be the upgrade path from sh404SEF for sites that want to migrate to Joomla 4. sh404SEF will continue to exists independently for Joomla 3 for several years, even after Joomla is end-of life. But you'll be able to replace sh404SEF on a joomla 3 site by installing 4SEF + 4SEO.
2 When is the stable version expected? I have a site in mind that we are developing now and will be live in two, three weeks.
See a temptative roadmap here. Stable 1.0. will be released on June 3, unless something is really broken in our design.
3 I see that you can only set 1 image for social share. Twitter, FB and linkedin have different sizes. How to deal with that?
4 Can you also set a different title and descriptions for social share? So different then the pagetitle and meta description.
We have that scheduled for 1.1. Separate title and desc is possible in sh404SEF, so I'm well aware of the need and purpose. Mostly a matter of priorities as few people go that far into customization.
So around 1.1 the social networks tab will have additional fields for custom title and desc. For images, the current field for selecting the "main" image will stay, but there will be another one to add "secondary images". The details need to be worked out as the current UI is best for the main image (it shows the auto-detected one) but not for multiples.
I have no plan to "auto-detect" multiple images, although that makes sense actually, and may not be that hard.
5 What we see now with sh404sef on a big site is that it sometimes loses by itself the url and goes to a duplicate that doesn't exist. That results in a 404. Is that problem tackled with 4SEO?
That'd be an sh404SEF-specific problem, 4SEO does not deal with URLs so this would not happen, unless the underlying issue is from joomla.
6 Is it possible to make a sitemap menu item?
No, and I don't have any plan for that, considering the benefit to "cost" ratio here. I'd rather thing the HTML sitemap builder is not really an SEO thing and leave it to another extension. It's really about displaying content to users in a specific format and then you get into the visual styling of things, which I think is a thing of itself.
Best regards
Yannick Gaultier
weeblr.com / @weeblr
