#9121 – Core redirects and JRedirect

Hi

Can you use 4SEO with JRedirects?

Most certainly but why would you? you have many redirects stored in it?

Or does 4SEO also automatically create redirects if you change a menu item or article alias?

We do not do that. it's pretty hard because Joomla makes it quite difficult to find the previous and updated URLs for the pages, except in the simplest cases (when an single article is directly linked from a menu item). In my experience, these automated redirects are wrong half of the times - again, except with simpler sites.

We of course have sh404SEF/4SEF to completey forget about that sort of issues - as they do not use menu items in URL, but that's not your question here I'm sure.

What happens to existing redirects in the Joomla Redirect Manager and/or htaccess, when you install 4SEO?

- .htaccess: nothing, they stay where they are. The .htaccess is outside of Joomla.

- Joomla redirect manager: by default, they'll stop having any effect but that's your choice. The Joomla redirect manager is not really a redirect manager. It only triggers when a 404 error happens. 

When you install and configure 4SEO, it has a 404 error page manager, meaning it provides you with a useful error page, displayed inside your website normal context, offering similar pages to your visitors, etc

And so with 4SEO, the 404 errors are handled before the Joomla redirect manager kicks in. So if you still want to have these redirects, you'll have to disable the customized 4SEO 404 error pages.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

his is a fairly large site, with getting on for 20 admins working on it. JRedirects isn't currently installed, but despite training and explaining the consequences numerous times, staff still go and change whole sections of the navigation without any thought/planning, setting up or requesting any redirects.

You've hit one of the largest SEO issues in Joomla: changing navigation changes URLs. 

But we are looking for a solutions to help with this and were considering JRedirects.

If JRedirects automates successfully redirecting changes in menu items, then go for it. Like I said my experience with this is that only minor and simple alias changes can be automatted. I don't think you'll see that in 4SEO ever.

 I hadn't looked at 4SEF. Is 4SEF something that you have in addition to 4SEO, or does 4SEO cover everything and work the same as 4SEF, with regards to redirects and custom URLs?

4SEF is an entirely separate thing and 4SEO does not and will never do what 4SEF does. I deliberately separated SEF URLs creation and management to a separate extension so that:

- you can use 4SEO without changing your existing URLs

- you can use 4SEF without needing 4SEO

So in your case:

- 4SEF would solve the problem because changing navigation would not affect URLs. URLs are based on a hierarchy of things that only depend on the article. Typically: /top-category/category/article-alias-or-title.

You can configure how categories are nested or remove categories entirely. As you can see, there's no menu items in there, so changing the menu items has not effect.

Another thing to consider is that once a URL is built, it's stored to the database. For instance, we record that the URL to article #42 is /blog/some-article.

Once it's stored to the database, it's not going to be modified in any way, unless you delete that URL yourself. So even if you change an article alias (not a menu item), the public URL will still stay the same. We keep using the old alias, but that's actually better than changing the URL.

If you do want to change the URL, you can then click on the URL in the 4SEF list of URLs and modify it to your liking. In that case, 4SEF will do an automatic redirect from old to new, 100% garanteed to be correct because 4SEF knows the full old and new URLs.

Now, there are several things to consider in your specific case:

- building URL without menu item is true for all Joomla content. May not be true for 3rd-party extensions, we may use menu items for them (but saving to database happens in the same way, so once the URL has been created, it won't change)

- By default, 4SEF would produce an entirely different set of URLs on your site. All your URLs changing at once is probably not what you want

- So you would probably configure 4SEF to "Use the same URL as Joomla". URLs would include menu items, but again as they are stored to the database, changing menu items or article alias would have no effect on the URL.

- using the same URL regardless of the menu items can break your site display sometimes, if you allocatte modules /template to specific menu items and joomla created duplicates non-SEF for that URL. It'srare and can be fixed but usually requires a manual intervention, clicking in a list of menu items to select the right one.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

We do not. It will be out of beta when enough users have tested it and reported success or failures. We fix issues as they appear but I don't feel comfortable making it a stable right now.

Beta has been going on for a bit more than 4 months but over the summer there were very few testers - we had many more people asking "when is the stable scheduled" than actually testing ;)

I'd feel confident running it in production today for regular Joomla content but only with testing on a staging copy of your site first.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

Thanks for testing and reporting!

I might encourage people to test if there was something to say it was in beta and/or testers needed. Unless I've missed it, I can't see anything about beta and testing on the information page.

4SEF is available to all sh404SEF subscribers, in the downloads page. These group of users have received a set of various emails over the last 6 months inlcuding:

- an initial call for testers for the private beta (that went well)

- another call (plus blog post) when I went for public beta in early June

- since then, roughly once a month a newsletter with development progress and additional calls for testing.

Plus all the people asking "when will it be ready" here on the helpdesk...

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi Sarah,

I have seen your facebook post in the Joomla group so I wanted to comment a bit more as I have a feeling I'm one of the two developers involved.

I was not sure at first because you mentioned getting extensions that "are listed on JED" and of course 4SEF is not listed on the JED (beta versions cannot be listed on JED) but then I thought this may be just a shortcut and the other extension was indeed listed there.

As you may have noticed, and aside from the discussion about getting more testers, 4SEF is not advertized on the site. There is no 4SEF product page (and the sh404SEF product page, linked to the sh404SEF JED record, clearly states it's only for Joomla 3), and there is no 4SEF subscription to buy, you can only buy an sh404SEF subscription.

In essence, you only get access to it either through talking to me here on the helpdesk, or after reading our newsletter, where it is abundantly clear that 4SEF is in beta testing only.

That said, after your post, I looked again at the site and realized that the wording on the actual "All products" page could be misleading (the only place where 4SEF is mentioned on the site) if you were to go right to it, so I changed it to this:

I hope this makes things more clear for everyone and I do regret not mentioning it in this conversation, which I normally do very abundantly.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

Thanks for getting back quickly and I'm kinda relieved I'm not the worst of the worst here ;) Again, sorry for not mentionning it but that's quite unusual as I'm always trying to recruit testers.

I hear what you said about reaching out to your existing customer base, but I'd try making it much clearer that you need beta testers on product pages, because any new/potential customers have no idea you need testers and might be happy to test.

My point was that there's no product page for 4SEF at the moment. There will be one only when it's out of beta. 

And there's a good reason for that. 4SEF may be able to help in solving your specific issue, but the primary reason it exists is to allow existing sh404SEF users to move to Joomla 4 without losing their URLs.

sh404SEF has both SEF URLS and SEO features. The SEF URLs are advanced, the SEO features quite limited. 

4SEO was designed to be the last SEO extension you'll need, replacing 4 or 5 ot them and with modern programmnig technologies that can take me through Joomla 4, 5 and the next few ones.

4SEF has only one goal: build the same URLs as sh404SEF. It catters to the few dozens of thousands of websites running sh404SEF which can't upgrade to Joomla 4. 

Note that it also helps users of JoomSEF and MijoSEF, whose users have the same problem but these 2 companies are gone from Joomla and won't produce Joomla versions of their extensions. So it's likely a few hundred thousands websites that 4SEF can assist.

But it's such a deeply technical, system kind of extension that it cannot fail. And it cannot be tested by me, just because the way it works makes deeply connected to each and every extension on a site.

Which is why the only "qualified" beta testers are sh404SEF users with active sites (I also actually have JoomSEF and MijoSef testers, very happy to find a way forward).

Is it possible that people who have downloaded 4SEF and used it, haven't found any issues, but haven't given you feedback?

Most certainly, and that's why I lose no occasion to remind sh404SEF that they should test and get back to me.

This isn't aimed at you, but it's a build up in frustration at the number of developers that either have their extensions listed as J4, when they are in beta (I wonder with some if it's just an excuse not to support the extension, because if you raise an issue you get it's in beta thrown at you).

You won't. 4SEF issues are solved immediately, and published quickly (there's been 3 versions in the last 2 weeks - and you can always access the development versions as well, published immediately when a bug is fixed or a changed made (true for all our extensions actually).

Oh and another developer, who's component subscriptions clearly state it includes ALL PLUGINS for that component, but once you've subscribed and go to download a plugin, won't let you without paying a further €30+ per year per plugin! I think my rant was a build up of 12+ months of this kind of thing happening over and over.

 have many extensions where I buy the pro or multi site version, when the free version functionality , or single site is all I need, which I hope helps support the developers to continue.

 To each their own but my take with all my extensions for the last 15 years has always been: everything's included. No plugin, no limit on number of sites.

Cheers

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

Sure, to be honest, without the absolute need of maintaining the URLs for all sh404SEF sites, there would only be 4SEO.

4SEO solves the URLs issues in Joomla in a different way, not always as efficiently but much more reliably and more importantly allowing it to work on any sites, using Joomla SEF, sh404SEF (on J3), 4SEF (on J3 or J4), or even JoomSEF, MijoSef, etc

That said, 4SEF being here now, it does that same old job of ensuring an Joomla item has one and only one URL, regardless of your navigation system, and changes you make to the menus, the article title, etc (even alias change won't change the URL). That has a huge value but it's not always for everyone and every site.

Anyway, glad we had this talk, that wording on the "Pricing"  page was not correct and I'm glad it's fixed now.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr