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This tutorial will cover installation and use of the OpenSEF component.
SEF = "Search Engine Friendly". The OpenSEF component creates easy-to-read URLs.
A URL is a web page address. (URL = "Uniform Resource Locator")
Right now, our new Joomla site has URLs that look like this:
http://www.nycircuits.com/index.php?option="com_content"&task="view"&id="12"&Itemid="26"
We'd like the above URL to look more like
http://www.nycircuits.com/about_xsl.htm
OpenSEF allows us to create these "Search Engine Friendly" URLs.
OpenSEF can be found at www.open-sef.org.
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Here's the OpenSEF site (as of May 2006). We'll click on Downloads.
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As of the date of this tutorial (May 2006) the most recent release is OpenSEF 2.0.0-RC5.
The "RC" in the release title means "Release Candidate". This means that the software is only a candidate for release, not a "final" release. It may contain bugs and is not recommended for production sites.
However, we're going to install it anyway, since many sites are using it with no problems. There are of course no guarantees that it will work.
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Now we've reached the actual file download screen. The larger file is the one we want. The other is just a "patch" (a partial release).
The file list changes frequently, so when you view it, it may be different. Just be sure to choose the latest full release.
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We'll save this file to the Windows desktop. (Needless to say, if you are not using Windows, you can save the file somewhere else.)
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Let's log in to the Joomla Administrator application. Select Installers - Components.
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- Browse to wherever you saved the OpenSEF package.
- Click on Upload & Install.
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Installation succeeded. The OpenSEF post-install screen displays.
This screen has a notice asking us to proceed to configuration. However, first we need to change some Joomla settings..
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Joomla has an SEO feature built in. We need to turn that on first. Choose Site - Global Configuration.
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In Global Settings:
- Click on the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tab.
- Click "Yes" for Search Engine Friendly URLs.
- A popup reminds us to rename the htaccess.txt file. We'll do that in the next step. (Click OK).
- Click Apply.
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Now let's look at our site in FileZilla. (Viewing the site in FileZilla was covered in a previous tutorial in this series. You can also use whatever tool your hosting provider has set up for viewing your files).
The htaccess.txt file is indicated.
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Here we've renamed it. Note that the filename now starts with a period. Now that the file is named ".htaccess", the web server will read it and process the directives in it.
(To rename a file using FileZilla, right-click then choose Rename).
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- This URL used to be http://www.nycircuits.com/index.php?option="com_content"&task="view"&id="12"&Itemid="26"
- Now it is much shorter.
However, the URL still does not have meaningful keywords. That is what we'll get with OpenSEF.
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Returning to the Joomla admin panel, we'll select the pulldown: Components - OpenSEF - Configuration.
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Returning to the site, we see that, after clicking on the same page as before, the URL is now a made up of a set of words including the Section name, Category name and title of the main content item.
Unfortunately, the URL doesn't work. That is, this URL is not being redirected to the right Joomla page.
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The redirection occurs in that .htaccess file we saw earlier in this tutorial. Let's examine that file.
Here's the file opened in Notepad after downloading in FileZilla.
(You can of course use the tool of your choice to examine the file. If the file doesn't appear with formatting as shown, be sure that you've downloaded the file using "ASCII" transfer mode.)
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Scrolling down, we can see that there are two similar sections in the file:
- Standard SEF Section
- 3rd Party or Core SEF Section
The second section is "commented out". That is, it has "#" in front of each line. This tells the websever to ignore that line.
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We need to comment out the first section, and "comment in" the second section. Here we've done that.
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After saving our changes in the .htacess file and uploading, we can return to our site, and see that our SEF URLs now work.
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One more note on the .htaccess file: the indicated line:
Options FollowSymLinks
can cause problems on some servers. If your SEF URLs don't work on some pages, just comment this line out.
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The site now has Search Engine Friendly, that is, readable web page addresses. These web page addresses (URLs) are automatically created from the content title and other settings.
The next tutorial will take a look at some of the options in the OpenSEF configuration.