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#11728 – Breadcrumbs and 4SEF

Posted in ‘Pre-sale questions’

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Monday, 31 March 2025 16:36 UTC

qwertic

Good afternoon,

I have a question regarding the 4SEF extension and the behavior of breadcrumbs with it.

Suppose we have a menu structure like the following:

Destinations > Cities > Paris

And inside the last menu I have an article called “10 things to do in Paris”.

Joomla core would generate this URL:

mydomain.com/destinations/cities/paris/10-things-to-do-in-paris

And if I enable the breadcrumbs module, it would work correctly showing the links of all the submenus.

Home > Destinations > Cities > Paris > 10 thins to do in Paris

However, if I want to shorten the URL to show only the title of the article:

mydomain.com/10-things-to-do-in-paris

If I do this in Joomla core using a hidden menu, the breadcrumbs stops working as I want because it shows the hidden menu structure.

Home > 10 thins to do in Paris

Would the breadcrumbs work correctly using the 4SEF extension?

That is, the short URL is displayed, but the breadcrumbs shows the entire menu path and submenus.

mydomain.com/10-things-to-do-in-paris

Home > Destinations > Cities > Paris > 10 thins to do in Paris

Thanks Yannick.

Monday, 31 March 2025 17:12 UTC

wb_weeblr

Would the breadcrumbs work correctly using the 4SEF extension?

It depends on your menu structure. You won't need hidden menu and all that, because 4SEF does not use menu items to build URLs.

However, Joomla displays the breadcrumb based on your menu structure. So in your example, you'd need to have an existing menu item to the Destinations category, then a submenu item to the Cities categories and a last one for the Paris category for Joomla to be able to display all this categories hierarchy in the breadcrumb.

Suppose we have a menu structure like the following:

Destinations > Cities > Paris
And inside the last menu I have an article called “10 things to do in Paris”.

If this is true, then yes, Joomla should be able to display the breadcrumb.

The difference between 4SEF and Joomla SEF is that 4SEF is not in the breadcrumb operation but in the URLs.

Joomla needs a direct menu item to have a direct URL (with only the article alias in the URL), while 4SEF does not use menu items and therefore the URL structure (how many categories are included) is just an option you select.

Things to note however:

- URL structure is a global setting, it will apply to all your articles URLs, not just the ones in a few categories

- if your site is already indexed and ranking, you do not want to do that, you do not want to change already working URL

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Monday, 31 March 2025 17:21 UTC

qwertic

Hello,

This is not an existing website, but a new one I am creating and it is not indexed yet.

So, if I understood correctly, I should create the menu and submenu structure in Joomla core, so that the breadcrumbs shows correctly all the hierarchy, and with 4SEF I would get the short URL using only the article alias and some category (if I define it that way in 4SEF configuration).

Is it like this?

Monday, 31 March 2025 17:41 UTC

wb_weeblr

Yes, this is correct. The menus are for navigation by users and Joolma managing breadcrumbs, etc

4SEF lets you have URLs with some, none or all categories.

One word of warning though: I do not recommend at all that you use such URL. I very, very strongly recommend that you use at least one category, if not two:

mydomain.com/paris/10-things-to-do-in-paris
or better
mydomain.com/cities/paris/10-things-to-do-in-paris

There are 2 reasons you should avoid article-alias-only SEF URLs for your articles:

- from an SEO standpoint, it will help search engines understand and more importantly classify your pages

- from a practical standpoint, without categories, you are unable to do (mass-)redirects, or assign no-index or canonical rules. You have to do every such normal SEO operations article by article.

There's no benefit to having the shortest URLs, and it can certainly cause your trouble in the future.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Monday, 31 March 2025 17:52 UTC

qwertic

Thank you for your comments.

Monday, 31 March 2025 18:21 UTC

wb_weeblr

You're welcome! removing all categories from links is a simple mistake that I see often with 4SEF unfortunately, because it's so easy to do.

Anyway, closing this ticket now, feel free to open a new one as needed. If you do so, please mention this ticket number in the new one.

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Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

This ticket is closed, therefore read-only. You can no longer reply to it. If you need to provide more information, please open a new ticket and mention this ticket's number.