Custom short URLs in Joomla 1.5 - joomla

I had a long ugly long URLs for Joomla articles. Being advised here to enable SEF, I got:
www.domain.com/cat1/subcat1/120-results-of-DES-project-in-2011
Nicer, but I also want custom short URL for specified article, like:
www.domain.com/des
Is this possible in Joomla 1.5? Simply adding rule to .htaccess is possible but not what I'd like, because:
I'd prefer that the short URL remains in the Location bar after the page is loaded
Joomla to use that short URL whenever the articles is clicked from news etc.
(P.S.: if it's not possible, then I'd be happy with some simple URL "aliaser" for Joomla, which would work similarly to .htaccess, but preferably with short URL remaining in the browsers' location bar.)

As Trev mentioned you need to turn on SEF URLs. In the admin, in the Site menu click on Global Configuration. In the Site configuration you should see a box for SEO settings. Turn on all 3 options unless you don't want the .html suffix, that one can be left off.
Now Joomla will create URLs like this -
www.yourdomain.com/parent-menu-alias/child-menu-alias/article-alias.html
If the menu item is linking directly to an article, then it would be -
www.yourdomain.com/menu-alias.html

Have you enabled SEF and htaccess in the Global Configuration? If you do then the URLs to any articles is controlled by the article's alias. e.g. if you want an article to be
http://mysite.com/my-url just open the article in the article manager and change the Alias field to my-url

Related

Why is Joomla 1.5 creating different URLs for the same articles on different pages?

I'm trying to understand the way Joomla (1.5) creates article URLs.
I created a module to display news. The module displays all the news, with correct URLs on the homepage mysite/component/content/article/xxxxxxxx.
I created a module to display the last article on the homepage and a button, see all news, linking to a menu item displaying a page with all the articles. The url is: mysite/news.
The problem is the URLs to the article are generated incorrectly as mysite/news/xxxxxxxx and they give a 404. How can I get the URLs to be the same as on the homepage?
Update: The new URL doesn't give a 404, it points to the same page as the menu, I mean mysite/news/ is the same as mysite/news/xxxxxxxx, it shows the list of all the articles and not the article itself
To create proper SEF URLs, two steps are needed:
Be sure to have a menu entry for each article in the list. You don't have to display that menu, it just has to exist. The menu entry's alias is used to build the SEF URL.
When creating links to such an article, be sure to include the parameter Itemid=n in the URL, with n being the id of the menu item. In article texts, use this structure:
index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=125
Joomla! will convert that into a SEF URL automatically, and it will still work, when you for some reason turn SEF off.
If you generate links in a module, the URL is not converted automatically. You have to call JRoute::_() for that:
echo JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=125');

What is the best way to customize Joomla urls?

I have a big joomla site and I want to customize its links to be as SEF as possible. I need an alias for each individual article and custom component item. Is it better to use the router.php class in each component or to assign a hidden menu item for each one from the perspective of the load on the server and the clean xml generated sitemaps?
Thanks in advance
As i understand your question i would like to suggest you to use sh404SEF. It rewrites Joomla URL to user-friendly format (SEF URL or URL rewriting):
For Example:
mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=69&id=34... becomes
mysite.com/en/sh404SEF-and-url-rewriting/list-of-available-plugins.html.
It is also a security component. Page title and meta tags manager for every page. With or without .htaccess file. Joomfish compatible. Caching system for high speed and very small DB queries overhead.
Or as you say you can also use router.php class in each of your component to make sef url. Hope this will help you.

Joomla .htm url mapping to pages in CMS

I inherited a Joomla site that has a set up I'm not familiar with. The url of pages on the site are like
http://hufboxing.com/about.htm
http://hufboxing.com/training.htm
http://hufboxing.com/schedule.htm
I looked in the .htaccess file and do not see any rules that map .htm urls to the Joomla query string urls.
In the CMs, on each article are url alias. The corresponding URL alias to each of the urls above are:
http://hufboxing.com/about-us
http://hufboxing.com/team-training
http://hufboxing.com/the-gym-schedule
However, going to any of these alias gives a 404 page. Even if I attach a .htm extension to these urls, it gives 404 page.
Where do I go in Joomla to add new pages to the site and add new .htm urls?
Here is the website:
http://www.hufboxing.com
That is normal. They are based on your article and menu aliases. Joomla uses a database to store the text so you won't find pages. How do you want the urls to look? Also what version? To add pages login to administrator and go to create article. Then you may want to go to the menu manager and link. I recommend you review the beginner docs at http://docs.joomla.org.

Get the SEF URLs for articles in Joomla

I use 'No Editor' in Joomla with SEF URLs enabled. With no SEF enabled it's easy to know the URL by just getting the ID of the article. Something like:
Article 1 would be:
http://www.abc.com/j15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=1
Now if I have SEF switched on, I would get URLs that look like:
http://www.abc.com/j15/the-content.html
Is there a way inside Joomla where I can find out what the SEF URL for a particular page is?
Currently I add these articles to a menu, then from the front-end I get the SEF URL and then use it. I know the process is a little dumb, but I want to find out if there is a better way inside Joomla where you can get the SEF URL (using 'No Editor').
Upload a component, sh404sef or ARTIOsef, to the administrator panel. Here you can manage SEF URLs as well as the old URL and what new name you want to give it.

URL rewriting in joomla

I need to rewrite url in joomla. But the url should not be showing "index.php" and no numbers (0-9) as well.
1st condition:
The url cannot be " http://www.abc.com/index.php/components/article" rather than it should be "http://www.abc.com/components/article".
2nd condition:
the url cannot be "http://www.abc.com/components/article/9" where it contains 9 number .
How can this be done?
Joomla comes with htaccess.txt, and the option to rewrite urls. So you have to first change the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess on the server, then login and in the configuration settings change SEF to on, and use .htaccess to on.
In support of the answers from gnomeontherun and Hennie. You have some control over how the url is made up by joomla, through the menu structure and the alias for the each menu.
Sometimes it's worth creating menu items even if you don't show them on a menu on your site.
e.g.
Menu structure:
Home
-Latest News *(Could be a category blog view)*
--News article 1 *(Link to article but this level need not be shown on menu)*
--News article 2 *(Link to article but this level need not be shown on menu)*
url should look like:
/latest-news *(for the blog view)*
/latest-news/news-article-1 *(for the article view)*
If there is no menu item which relates to an article, Joomla makes up the url itself using category+id/article-alias+id etc. If it does find a menu item, it will use the structure of the menu instead.
Joomla uses the alias of the menus for the actual content:
i.e. menu-alias-level1/menu-alias-level2/news-article-1
Using this method from the beginning will allow you to keep your urls consistent whether they are accessed through the blog page route or directly. This will help with your SEO.
Of course it can be a pain to create a menu item for every article but I know some Joomla guys who swear by it and will do it even for thousands of pages...
for the index part ...
Perhaps this will work for you too
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301,L]
or
Redirect 301 /index.php http://www.yourdomain.com
To get rid of the 'index.php':
Rename the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess
In the backend, turn on SEF URLs and URL rewrite
Joomla will then show your article using something like "http://www.example.com/category/article/9", unless you assign a menu item to that article. There is no need to show that menu, so you can create new menu, call it 'hidden' (or any other valid name) and do not publish the module.
A more comfortable option is to use one of the many SEF components, which make it much easier to manage the URLs. Most if them additionally provide meta data control.

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