#7253 – SEF URLs from RSFOrm Pro using "Preview" link in backend

 I've recently redeveloped a site for a client and on the old site when I create a form using RSFORM PRO then click on the PREVIEW link in the admin area it would generate an SEF URL such as https://www.xxxx.uk/myformname-2.html or something like that whereas on the new version of the site I only get the raw URL https://www.xxxx.uk/index.php?option=com_rsform&view=rsform&formId=209

Obviously I can create a menu item but doing so each time would be laborious and I didn't have to do that on the old version of the site.

What am I missing in my setup?

Okay thanks for that - though I'm sure on the old site I could create a new form, click on PREVIEW and it would load the page on the frontend using an SEF URL without me needing to do anything else? Which to me implied that the link was being loaded through the frontend somewhere so that it could be indexed?

So in order to get the SEF URL I need to create a menu or other type of link to it on the frontend?

Which indicates that RSForms changed the way they build the URL to that preview and now use the non-SEF version instead of the SEF version - which is 100% good and exactly how it should always have been in the first place.

Only it's the same version of RSFORMPRO on both sites so I'm not clear on how it can do one thing on one site and another thing on the other? There's obviously something different but RSForm versions isn't it. When I click on the preview link it opens up a new tab on the frontend with the form loaded into it and the URL is non-SEF for a brief moment, then quickly changes to an SEF one.

Indexed by who? search engines? sh404SEF does not do any indexing or "picking up" links, it only processes non-sef URLs that are sent to it by Joomla or extensions.

Sorry, wrong phrasing but yeah I meant that in order for the SEF URL to be generated by sh404SEF it needs to appear somewhere on the frontend so normally speaking adding a link to it or a menu item would do this, however on the old site I don't do this, I just create a brand new form, save it, click on PREVIEW and a new tab opens with the form frontend of the site and it already has an SEF URL without adding any links.

i have an example video I can show you but it's too big to upload here

Solved it!

it was the setting "301 redirect from non-sef to sef" in the main configuration which needed turned on. I think!

Okay, fair enough, I'll take your advice, it was just to save having to create a menu link for every form we add to the site (they have over 125 of them now...) but I'll trust your judgement and switch that back off.

Hi Yannic

Yeah the forms are usually used as standalone pages rather than embedding within pages for various reasons (though we have that option too) which was why simply using that Preview button to create a link for us without having to link from elsewhere or add another menu item was handy, however it's not a major deal to simply create the SEF URL myself each time so I'll stick with doing that to avoid any issues of the sort you mentioned (though to be honest we never experienced any in the 5 or 6 years we'd be using the previous version of the site).

Thanks for your guidance.

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