SEF advance

[anton_juan2004]

Dear Sakic,
I installed it onto a linux web server apache. Before that I was using mambo's built in SEF. With your product i simply overwrite the existing one. I could see shortened URLs but when I click on any of them I will go to home page (the default 404 page). There is a second problem that some categories' name in URLs were just shown fine but some others' name are not. An example, a correct one /news/world, a wrong one /news// which should be /news/finance.

After this frustration I uninstalled everything and installed mambo from scratch. I re-entered menus and content items manually. After finishing that I turned on SEF support but again the outcome was not changed. Still not working. I checked everything triple times. Where I'm doing wrong I can't see??

[Saka]

Originally Posted by taylorutah

I just bought SEF Advance!

It installed in seconds and worked instantly.

I do have old links in my site and have a couple questions about those. When I use HTMLAREA3-XTD to create links what is the best way to do this so that the links will point to the same category or contnet regardless of whether I change the page title that it points to? Does that make sense?

Going forward, when I am creating content with my editor what is the best way to insert links (assuming the link tool doesn't work and I have to paste a url)? What url should I use the SEF one or the old super long one? (ex. http://www.mysite.com/index.php?opti...ntact&Itemid=3)

Final Question:

If my web site is called "Taylor's Web Site" mambo put's this in the title of every page! How can I change this to say something else?

Thanks for the help!

Hello Taylor,

The best form to input the links in the content is using relative, non-sef link in this form:
<a href="index.php?option=com_contact&Itemid=3">LINK</a>
Note: no leading http://, no leading slash, just relative internal link.
Then the built-in Mambot will automatically convert this link to SEF (whichever installed), no matter if you change titles or not it will change every time.
Do not rely on editors and their link tool as they will almost all generate false URLs, do this manually.

About title, this requires core hack. If you search general forum I'm sure you'll find the info.

[Saka]

Originally Posted by anton_juan2004

Dear Sakic,
I installed it onto a linux web server apache. Before that I was using mambo's built in SEF. With your product i simply overwrite the existing one. I could see shortened URLs but when I click on any of them I will go to home page (the default 404 page). There is a second problem that some categories' name in URLs were just shown fine but some others' name are not. An example, a correct one /news/world, a wrong one /news// which should be /news/finance.

After this frustration I uninstalled everything and installed mambo from scratch. I re-entered menus and content items manually. After finishing that I turned on SEF support but again the outcome was not changed. Still not working. I checked everything triple times. Where I'm doing wrong I can't see??

You are using Short URLs but you haven't entered title alias to every content item!
So either use Long URLs or enter title alias for every item. This is described in the included readme file btw.
If you have further problems please contact me directly on mail.

[taylorutah]

Thanks Emir that's just what I needed to know!

Where is the easist place to get the long url(the one you say I should use) for my content, category and scetion pages? In other words, how do I find out the the link is now that I only see the SEF version of the links?

[Saka]

Originally Posted by taylorutah

Thanks Emir that's just what I needed to know!

Where is the easist place to get the long url(the one you say I should use) for my content, category and scetion pages? In other words, how do I find out the the link is now that I only see the SEF version of the links?

For items linked to menu you can see non-url links when you hit edit.
For others you will have to disable SEF for a moment and find out.

[mike2004]

Hi Saka,

My users could not able to loging when SEF advance is enabled and getting following message

"You are not authorized to view this resource.You need to login "

http://www.pharmaarticles.net/login.html

but the link is working well with default mambo SEF. Something wrong , could you through some light ?

[mike2004]

It's fixed now. Please ignore my request

[kreigle]

I purchased this last year and would like to get the latest version.
What do i do if my email address changed since I made the purchase? I cannot receive it if it emailed to the email address I purchased it with, as that email account is closed.

I still have the Paypal account, but have new email addresses linked to it.

[Saka]

Originally Posted by kreigle

I purchased this last year and would like to get the latest version.
What do i do if my email address changed since I made the purchase? I cannot receive it if it emailed to the email address I purchased it with, as that email account is closed.

I still have the Paypal account, but have new email addresses linked to it.

You can send a mail with request from the domain registered for SEF advance usage.

[talos]

Hi,

Do you know if SEF advance works with Mamblefish? if yes, how links look like?

[Saka]

Originally Posted by Hanif@Mambers

Figured it out...
that Flash chat wont work with my mod rewrite on...man what lame duck..

Anyway how I got it working...reloaded that SEF.php from Core 4.5.1 and removed entry to Flash chat. Now it works like charm....

Now Emir if we can get that Flash Chat going...it would be sweet! Sweet as honey!

Kind regards,

Hanif

FlashChat has a bug. Please note that I can not support 3rd party components and their incompability with SEF advance due to their buggy code. But out of courtesy here is the solution:
Open the files:
inc/cmses/mamboCMS.php and
inc/cmses/mamboCMS2.php

Find the line:
require_once($mambo_root_path . "includes/sef.php" );
and comment out that line like here:
//require_once($mambo_root_path . "includes/sef.php" );

That should fix the problem.

[taylorutah]

So I have been developing my site and just reenabled SEF. Everything works great except the menu. I am using a customized Solareflare II template. Here is what happens:

When SEF is off the Menu works great, all the sub-level menus appear as the parent menu item is clicked. When I enable SEF Once I get on level down the menu closes up, it takes me to the second level page, but the Menu(or navigation) close back the the "Home Page" look. Not sure I am doing a very good job explaining this.

I have a menu item when clicked it produces 3 submenu items, they each in turn have an additional 3 submenus on each of them. With SEF enabled when I click on the top (parent) item the first sublevel of 3 items shows up, but when I click on that level the menu closes, it takes me to the correct page, but I know longer have the menu open.

How do I get this to work with SEF?

[Saka]

It's Itemid problem and it depends on how you structured your menu.
Mail me a direct link and enable the debug in SEF advance and I will advise how to set it up correctly.

[cmeinck]

I've been using SEF Advance for about 2 months or so. I've been able to get into Google News and create URL's that include titles. Anyway, I'm looking to really work on my SEO and noticed that I have long URL's checked. Is there any benefit to going to short URL's and how will this affect my current placement in the engines? Also, will Google News get upset that some of my URL's are changing? I worked hard to get accepted into Google News and would hate to jeopordize it. That being said, I'm looking for ways to get the most from SEF Advance and Mambo. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
chris

[talos]

Originally Posted by talos

Hi,

Do you know if SEF advance works with Mamblefish? if yes, how links look like?

Any idea if this works? any working examples?

[romanus]

Originally Posted by Saka

It's Itemid problem and it depends on how you structured your menu.
Mail me a direct link and enable the debug in SEF advance and I will advise how to set it up correctly.

This is not a new problem, is there a place where you have described this somewhere? .. How to build the menu structures to solve the itme id? Is it the following;

Create a main menu item call it all pages and leave it unpublished. Then create section menu items as children of the all pages menu itme, but publish them.

I have 4 sites with this problem. I think I need a lesson in this as well. Thanks for your time.

[Saka]

This is a common problem in Mambo and not only related to SEF advance.

Little history
Itemid is inheritance from old Mambo days (version 3.0.7) where it was used to determine the correct position in the Pathway.
As time went we used it more and more in Mambo: first for dynamic modules, then menu highlighting and submenus, dynamic templates and most recently by parameters. Soon it became obvious that this method of passing the Itemid as GET variable is outdated and can't handle those multiple tasks that well.
To fix this we introduced a method to find out the correct Itemid instead of passing it (this method comes directly from SEF advance btw). Now this method has its own rules which determines which Itemid will be returned.

How does SEF advance handle Itemid?
As URLs in SEF advance don't pass Itemid (typical URL looks like domain.com/animals/pets/cats/) it has a function that must return Itemid by looking at the menu database. Which Itemid is returned depends on how you structured your menu. Some menu items, namely, have priority over others.
This priority is as follows:
1) Content Item Link
2) Typed Content Link
3) Content Section List
4) Content Category List
5) Content Section Blog (specific)
6) Content Category Blog (specific)
7) Content Section Blog (global)
8 ) Content Category Blog (global)

What does this mean?
For example: if you have linked your section both as Section List and Section Blog the Itemid of Section List Link will be returned. That means that when you click on a content item of the section it will not highlight the blog link as long as section list link is present in the menu.
Other example: if you linked a Content Item to menu viewing it will not highlight it's section or blog, but the linked item link instead as it has top priority.

Other things to think about
If you upgraded from previous versions of Mambo or used some 3rd party component that messes with menu table, chances are that your menu table has junk in it. Use phpMyAdmin to clear the items from mos_menu table that are not present in Menu admin.

How to debug?
Turn on SEF advance debug function and see which Itemid it returns. Then go to Menu admin and see which id it corresponds to. If that's not the Item you think should be highlighted you should try trashing it.
If that id is not in the Menu admin at all (remember to check all menus, not only mainmenu) then use phpMyAdmin to delete such entries.

This was a small tutorial on Itemid handling in Mambo/SEF advance.

[Saka]

Originally Posted by talos

Hi,

Do you know if SEF advance works with Mamblefish? if yes, how links look like?

It works ok as Mambelfish uses cookies to store the current language. The URLs look the same as allways once the language has been selected.
Only the links that select the language should not be SEF-ed (the ones with lang=xx in it).

In the future, in cooperation with Alex (Mambelfish author) I will be looking into making non-cookie support for Mambelfish with URLs like:
http://www.domain.com/en/section/category/item/
http://www.domain.com/fr/section/category/item/
http://www.domain.com/de/section/category/item/

[romanus]

Thanks, Much appreciated.

[Saka]

Originally Posted by cmeinck

I've been using SEF Advance for about 2 months or so. I've been able to get into Google News and create URL's that include titles. Anyway, I'm looking to really work on my SEO and noticed that I have long URL's checked. Is there any benefit to going to short URL's and how will this affect my current placement in the engines? Also, will Google News get upset that some of my URL's are changing? I worked hard to get accepted into Google News and would hate to jeopordize it. That being said, I'm looking for ways to get the most from SEF Advance and Mambo. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
chris

I would not change the URLs to short ones now. I think long URLs would get better SE positions as all words present in the title are in URL as well. Google likes the pages with search string in the URL.
Short URLs have benefit of beeing shorter (easier to remember).