#8557 – From sh404sef to 4SEO

Hi

I currently have sh404sef installed and would like to understand how to manage migration (and urls) by switching to Joomla 4 with 4SEO.

There's no migration path. 4SEO is not a replacement for sh404SEF as it does not do anything with SEF URLs. It's designed to work together with Joomla SEF, sh404SEF or any other SEF extension you may use.

This site has a thousand pages and I doubt it is possible to redirect manually. How can you manage the transition from Joomla 3 with sh404sef to Joomla 4 with 4SEO?

We are developing a new extension called 4SEF which will handle SEF URLs for Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. 4SEF is similar to sh404SEF except it only does one thing: SEF URLs. No other SEO features. All SEO features are already available from 4SEO (and much more).

- 4SEF will ensure SEF URLs produced are the same on a Joomla 4 site

- at the same time 4SEF is available, we will add an import feature to 4SEO to read any custom meta data that were entered in sh404SEF.

We hope to have a first beta release of 4SEF this first quarter of 2022.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

For migration to Joomla 4 I seem to understand that it is better to wait a few months and do it by installing 4 SEF on Joomla 3 and migrating to Joomla 4 with this component installed. Did I get it right?

That's one option, certainly a safe one as you'll split the migration in 2 steps, which might be easier to manage. It depends  a lot on your site, what type of content you have etc (basically the same for sh404SEF as it is for Joomla 4 itself).

If you mostly have regular Joomla articles, migrating to 4SEF should rather straighforward: enable 4SEF, disable sh404SEF, updating 4SEO and importing meta data and redirects from sh404SEF into 4SEO.

I understand that 4SEO will ensure that a url generated with sh404sef will stay the same by deactivating sh404sef and upgrading to Joomla 4. Got that right?

Not really:

- 4SEO has no knowledge of SEF URLs, it does not do anything about them. Only 4SEF deals with URLs

- the upgrade will not be automatic, ie 4SEF will not de-activate sh404SEF upon installation. That'd be way too dangerous. This will be a migration, not an update. You will have to take your site offline or work on a test copy, install, de-activate sh404SEF, etc 

The steps are not fully defined yet, but it's definitely not "just install". Exactly like Joomla 4.

Because this is what is needed, keep a url generated by sh404sef the same when you deactivate sh404sef to migrate from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4.

This is the reason 4SEF exists, keep the same URL generated, so yes, this is what migrating to 4SEF will do. Again, what type of content you manage is the most important thing here.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

Yes, if your only concern is keeping URLs and you don't have much meta data in sh404SEF, you'll be fine with 4SEF. 

4SEO will be needed only for real SEO work: social network sharing (OGP), sitemaps, structured data, etc

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr