This is the place where all the Frequently Asked Questions will be gathered. Hopefully the list will grow in time so you will be able to find solutions to all the main difficulties you may encounter while using JoomSEF.

1. After installing the component, when I click any link, I get "404 Page not found" error.
2. After installing the component, I experience "500 Internal server error" message.
3. How do I install new version of the component?
4. How do I install a SEF extension to JoomSEF?
5. I am experiencing duplicate URLs like -2, -3, etc. What should I do?
6. How to reduce number of SEF links generated?
7. Does the component work with extension XY?
8. What if I do not like URLs generated by it?
9. After upgrading JoomSEF, the duplicate URLs have appeared, why is that?
10. After installing JoomSEF, there are SQL queries visible over my page, why is that?
11. Why do I see PHP warnings or fatal errors in JoomSEF's administration?
12. Why doesn't my menu work as expected?
13. Why doesn't Checkout button in VirtueMart work?
14. JoomSEF is not working when JoomFish installed.

After installing the component, when I click any link, I get "404 Page not found" error.

There is probably a problem with .htaccess file configuration. If there wasn't one already created JoomSEF should create it during installation. Otherwise, you can use the one from Joomla by renaming htaccess.txt to .htaccess and do the necessary modifications described in it. The most important is the RewriteBase directive if your website home URL points to server's subdirectory.

After installing the component, I experience "500 Internal server error" message.

There is probably some misspelling or invalid configuration in your .htaccess file. Please recheck it and do needed modifications. Please, see documentation for details.

How do I install new version of the component? 

Since the JoomSEF version 1.3.3, there is an update utility provided. You can upgrade your installation easily by clicking "Update" button and the newest version will be downloaded and upgraded automatically for you. The automatic upgrade will preserve your current configuration and all the generated URLs.

As alternative or for older versions, you can use the default Joomla!'s component unistall and install utility to remove the old version and install the new one. However if you do so, your configuration and manually entered URLs (if you have any) will be lost and you will need to set them again. Therefore you are strongly advised to backup them using provided utility first. Also you can do the update manually by replacing the files from the distribution package. This is however recommended to experienced users only.

How do I install a SEF extension to JoomSEF?

In order to correctly install a SEF extension, go to Components -> JoomSEF, click the Install button in the toolbar and use the Install SEF Extension form to install new extension from the package.

I am experiencing duplicate URLs like -2, -3, etc. What should I do? 

If you are facing duplicate content items links e.g. http://yoursite.you/article.html, http://yoursite.you/article-2.html, etc. that lead to the same content, this is most probably caused by so called "Itemid" variable (although there may be other reasons also).

The Itemid is internal Joomla! variable used to identify the source of a URL link. E.g. main menu or sub menu item that your visitor used to get to a certain content. According to this variable, different Joomla! configurations are applied - e.g. what template will be used or what modules will be visible, etc.

Since JoomSEF 1.4.0, several new configuration options are provided in "Advanced configuration" section. The option "Exclude source info" may be used to exclude the Itemid variable from the URL and thus eliminate the duplicates caused by it. However, ignoring it completely may lead to unwanted Joomla! functionality, like not swithing the templates as desired or so. Whether this will be a problem for you or not depends mainly on the way how your site is designed and how complicated it is. If you need to fix this, the Itemid should be "reappended" to the SEF URL as an extra part using the option "Reappend source". Then the resulting URL will look like http://yoursite.you/article.html&Itemid=xy.

Since JoomSEF 2.0.0 there is a possibility to set your own Itemid for each extension that will always be used with it - thus even when "Reappend source" is set to Yes, that extension won't have the ?Itemid=xy appended. You can find this option in extension parameters. If you leave the "Override Itemid" field blank, the default Itemid will be used, but won't be appended as ?Itemid=xy in URL. Thus you can achieve that the ?Itemid=xy will be added only to those extensions that need it (mostly content). But be careful, setting Itemid to some random number can ruin your menu functionality!

Another new option is "Ignore multiple sources". If selected, only one URL will be created for each page using the first Itemid. Every other link varying in Itemid only will be ignored and the already created one will be used instead. But again - this can ruin your menu functionality! This option has no effect on extensions with custom Itemid set.

How to reduce number of SEF links generated? 

Some duplicates or increased ammount of SEF links that may be undesirable may be caused by other variables used for paging, sorting, etc. These can be also excluded from the SEF URL and reappended behind it. To do so, active the option "Append non-SEF variables to URL".

Does the component work with extension XY? 

You can find all the extensions available for free download here and all the paid extensions here.

What if I do not like URLs generated by it? 

The JoomSEF component always tries to generate search engine friendly URLs. In many cases, and for standard simple components, this behaviour is sufficient. However, for some more complex components with special funcitonality this may not be efficient enough or may even cause the components to stop working. In such case, you may choose to disable SEF generation for such module in JoomSEF configuration. If you would still like to have SEF URLs for such components, a special extension defining rules for how the specific components's URLs should be treated needs to be written. This extension might be either developed by the module author or we can include it in our distibution. Please contact us if you want certain module to be also supported. 

After upgrading JoomSEF, the duplicate URLs have appeared, why is that? 

If you have updated from previous major version, e.g. from 1.4.0 to 1.5.0, you may experience that some of the URLs are duplicated, even though they were okay previously. This may be caused because the format of SEF URLs stored in your database has changed and the new URLs are looking slightly different than the old ones. In such case, if you do not want JoomSEF to regenerate them automatically (by either purging the existing one or deleting them manually) or if you have many customized URLs, you will need to use the JoomSEF DB upgrade script 1.5.0 to update the DB for you. You are highly encouraged to backup your DB prior to doing this! After updating, the old URLs will have the same format as the new ones, so they will be matched correctly and no duplicates will appear. 

After installing JoomSEF, there are SQL queries visible over my page, why is that? 

This means that JoomSEF could not run the SQL query on your database. Please, check that Joomla has right privileges set to access all the DB tables. This error can also occure when there is some older version of needed table left in your database - try uninstalling JoomSEF, manually deleting the needed table and installing JoomSEF again. Always backup your database prior to doing such changes!

Why do I see PHP warnings or fatal errors in JoomSEF's administration? 

If you see errors like "Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in ..." or "Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in ...", please, upgrade to the newest version of JoomSEF - this problem is caused by incompatibility with PHP4 running as CGI. As regards other errors - please, report them in our support forum.

Why doesn't my menu work as expected? (Problems with modules not showing or the correct menu items not selected)

This problem is most likely caused by incorrect Itemid sending to Joomla. You can control the way JoomSEF handles this variable using "Exclude source info", "Reappend source info" and "Ignore multiple sources" options in configuration or with some options in extensions' parameters. You can find more information in JoomSEF's documentation.

Why doesn't Checkout button in VirtueMart work?

If the Checkout button in VirtueMart redirects you to the VirtueMart's frontpage, go to JoomSEF's configuration and set the "Set server QUERY_STRING?" option to "Yes".

JoomSEF is not working when JoomFish installed.

Go to Extensions -> Plugins and check that the System - ARTIO JoomSEF plugin is enabled and JoomFish - router plugin is disabled.