SEO/SEF - Description, Problems and Solutions
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- Brandon Kirkland
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 126
- Thanks: 0
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Using GoDaddy or one of their sub-contractors?
forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=429&t=2...art=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a - Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth. —Archimedes
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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Timothy T Gilchrist wrote:
This is a great thread and is helping me to understand my SEF Problems... My site is 75.125.60.11/~microeng/ and the hots is Siteground.
Question: When I open the .htaccess files to paste in the firefox test, there is nothing there? Am I missing some code?
Any info on how Siteground deals with SEF?
I tried the "Download sh404SEF " solution by Cole Chambers above and unfortunately it did not work.
Thanks, Tim
This is a problem I noticed with the "not live yet" urls. Several hosts use this configuration to allow for you to build you site while not directing the domain over yet, but things like SEO just don't work until it reads www.yourdomain.com instead of ipaddress/~something.
Sort of sucks because you can't test things first unless you go in and change a bunch of stuff to make your domain read as ipaddress/~something. The trouble there is that you have to go back and change it all again when you do go live.
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- Anne-Marie Anderson
- Newbie
- Posts: 4
- Thanks: 0
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Help!!
I followed the instructions in Jeff's addendum
"Using your favorite ftp software, in your root directory, locate the .htaccess file. Then open it up in a text editor, if you do not see that file go ahead and create a new .htaccess file and take note of the period at the beginning of the file. The first line of this file, you will need following line: redirect /firefox www.getfirefox.com
Save the file, open up your web browser and type in the address bar www.yoursite.com/firefox , use your domain name in the yoursite.com portion. If you get redirected to the Firefox web page then it was successful, if not, then you need to change the web server httpd.conf file. If you are unable to do this you will need to contact your hosting company to do this for you
If something happens you can revert back to non-SEF by "simply:"
open you file manager or FTP client, and use it to rename your .htaccess back to htaccess.txt
Next, open your configuration.php file which is also located in your Joomla root folder) and change the
$mosConfig_sef = '1';
line to:
$mosConfig_sef = '0'; "
Sorry, I can't manage to "quote" this part of the thread.
I managed to see Firefox. But lost my site and my admin functions. Just getting security warnings such as:
Do you want to save this file or find a program to open it ? or Do you want to open or save this file.?
So went to my FTP client to change the name back from .htaccess to htaccess.txt. But where has it gone? The file name is just not showing up in the directory where it was. So how on earth can I rename it back to what it was? I FTP'd another copy of the original htaccess.txt into the directory but it hasn't helped.
I am very much a beginner at all this and feel pretty desperate now. My original problem was that if I didn't have SEF Urls activated then none of my internal links would work. Yet if they were active I could not use my registration or search modules. In trying to solve this I've lost all my admin.
What now, please someone.
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- Anne-Marie Anderson
- Newbie
- Posts: 4
- Thanks: 0
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OK, I've learnt something new.
I was looking for the renamed .htaccess file on Filezilla, my FTP programme, which is where I change everything. It just wasn't visible. I always thought that this was an exact mirror of the files in File Manager on my cPanel.
However, I went into cPanel this morning and found .htaccess exactly where I expected it to be in the public_html directory and was able to change it there back to htaccess.txt and I now have recovered the access to my site. Panic over.
But I am still left with the problem which prompted me to try changing .htaccess. When I have SEF Urls activated, I cannot use my registration and search modules. With SEF turned off they work fine. However, when I turn them off all my internal links stop working. The link is redirecting me back to the content of my home page (although the address bar actually shows the address of the link that should be displayed).
I would willingly turn off SEF if only my links would remain. I've even tried rebuilding them from scratch whilst SEF is turned off, but they still won't work.
I'm using Joomla 1.5.6 and Equinox template.
Site is
www.wheelie-easy.com
Any solutions? Bearing in mind I am a novice, and get stuck on things like .htaccess.
Could it be that I have my new site currently parked on an old name? www.latitudewithattitude.co.uk
Try loading the following page and clicking on 'Traveller Review'. The home page content will be displayed.
www.latitudewithattitude.co.uk/index.php...log&id=75&Itemid=328
(use Explorer to view the site for now. Firefox is currently playing up for me)
All advice would be much appreciated.
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- Kimberly Owens
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 28
- Thanks: 0
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My question is related but with a twist. I am currently revamping a legacy site (
www.kaffeinebuzz.com
) that's been up for five years and has hundreds of pages, and will be migrating it to Joomla/Rockettheme.
I'd like to get feedback from someone who has done this. I understand there's no other way to convert each legacy page to a Joomla page other then to go one by one, copying and pasting content. I can deal with that.
My concern is specifically, preserving the current URLs that are already recognized by search engines, and if I can use SEF to accomplish this. It seems as though I can if I'm able to jump through the configuration hoops, but I'm not completely sure. I've also thought about creating archive pages for each section with links to the legacy pages as they are, non-converted, but have not run a site that is a mix of both php and Joomla pages. So I'm not sure if there's a conflict there.
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- Joe Mathis
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 29
- Thanks: 0
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I hope someone can help me here as I am quite frustrated.
I am running a site, www.flyrecipes.com , using synapse, and I have sh404sef running. I am working on upgrading the site to Joomla 1.5.8, also using synapse and I cannot get any form of SEO/SEF working. I have tried native Joomla, sh404sef, and others. I have been through every forum response I can find without success. My redirects work perfectly when I use the examples, as mentioned above. My homepage always displays blank and a look at the source shows the following:<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <jdoc:include type="head" />
and that's it, no other code.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Joe -
Fly Recipes [dot] com
(This is my Rockettheme art...)
Fake bugs are better bugs...
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- Cole
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 27
- Thanks: 0
- web development
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Joe,
With Joomla 1.5.8, you don't need to use sh404sef. Joomla can now do this for you!
All you have to do is go to your global configuration menu in the Joomla admin and on the right hand side where it says SEO settings:
*Turn Search Engine Friendly URL's to "yes"
*Turn Use Apache mod rewrite to "yes"--before this step, log into your file manger through Cpanel, and find the htacccess.txt file, and simply rename it to just ".htaccess" and save.
That's all you need to do...make sure to turn off the SEF function in sh404sef, but I recommend you leave on the security function available in that program.
Go back to your site and refresh the browser, you should now have SEF URL's that reflect the name of the menu item you chose
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- Cole
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 27
- Thanks: 0
- web development
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Joe,
When looking at your site...you should be able to select all your files from the file manager in Cpanel, and drag and drop them into the public html file, then you can delete the index.php file, and you will not see that in your url/file structure if all the files are simply transferred over to your public html root...just a suggestion, but only try it if you understand what I am referring to.
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- Joe Mathis
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 29
- Thanks: 0
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Cole,
Thanks for the reply. I don't think I was clear though. I am trying to use just the native Joomla SEO/SEF. and when I turn it on and take all the appropriate steps i get only blank pages. When I do a 'view source' of these blank pages all I see is the code I show above as if the PHP stops processing. Since I am using sh404sef on mu current live site i tried that and others as well with the same result.
I am afraid I do not understand second message about deleting the index.php file....
Thanks,
Joe -
Fly Recipes [dot] com
(This is my Rockettheme art...)
Fake bugs are better bugs...
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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This is a line in the .htaccess file that may need to be commented out or uncommented depending on your server configuration. You may have to try it both ways.
## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks
Have you tried this yet?
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