sh404SEF

297 reviews

Get sh404SEF (v4.24.7)

Introduction

Site Management, SEF, SEO & Metadata, URL Redirection, Social Share

After more than 15 years of duty, sh404SEF won't be ported to Joomla 4. To move to Joomla 4, please consider our newer extensions, released over the last couple years, including 4SEF to maintain your site SEF URLs (see Related extensions on this page or visit our website) and 4SEO for metadata.
sh404SEF is discontinued from August 17, 2023 - same as Joomla 3 end of support. Please update to 4SEF and 4SEO to maintain your URLs and metadata.

Joomla 4 notice

We created sh404SEF® for Joomla with SEO in mind. sh404sef helps you improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic to your website. Satisfy many of the Google recommendations for search engine optimization with just a few clicks.
sh404sef also includes many security features.

sh404SEF® is the most popular and longest developed Joomla seo extension. We are dedicated, full-time Joomla professionals who work each and every day to bring you the very best extensions and prompt support. Our staff have over 20 years of combined experience with Joomla (and Mambo) and we maintain some of the longest, continually developed Joomla add-ons available.

Brand new documentation set, including "Getting started" as well as other specialized short videos.

Features:
* sh404SEF rewrites Joomla URL to user-friendly format (SEF URL or URL rewriting): mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=69&id=34
becomes mysite.com/en/sh404SEF-and-url-rewriting/list-of-available-plugins.html but it does in a way that prevent Joomla standard SEF duplicate content issues.

Important: from version 4.17, we automatically add robots meta tag required for full visibility in Google search results.
NEW: Support for Google Analytics version 4
NEW: Full Turkish translation
NEW: insert a QRCode anywhere, on any page
NEW: Redesigned Google Analytics reports, can now also display on frontend without having to log-in
NEW: block requests based on simple rules
NEW: Redirect mutiple URLs together, no more using .htaccess
NEW: Add canonical tags to mutiple URLs in one go
NEW: URL shortener can now shorten any URL, not just of current site
NEW: extended Structured data support: social profiles, corporate contacts, logos
Connector with wbAMP, our Accelerated Mobile Pages for Joomla plugin
Automatic redirect of 404s errors to most similar page
Google Sitename, Google breadcrumb and Google sitelinks search JSON+LD markup
Using oAuth2 for Analytics authorization
Twitter Cards support
Google Analytics Universal support
Google Tags manager support
all output through JLayout, easily override in template
Create and insert Open Graph data: quickly and easily add social media buttons to your entire site to allow sharing on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin and Pinterest.
Integrated Google Analytics reports display
Automatically generate tiny URLs (shURLs) for your content
Full urls and bulk meta data management
Multi-lingual support
Easily redirect 404s to suggested SEF URLS
Instantly add global support for canonical URLs (add rel="canonical" HTTP headers)
Removes automatically duplicate URLs, a common problem with Joomla websites
Create human ear and search engine friendly (SEF) URLs
Control URL re-write mode on a per-application basis
Support for Google News URL format
Easily customize the page title and page description with bulk updater
Create customized error pages (i.e. 404) with relevant links, suggest best match pages
Harden against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS)
Harden against malicious page requests
Limit flooding attacks
Protect input forms such as the contact page from spam (using Project Honey Pot)
Control site access from suspicious domains (using IP address whitelisting and blacklisting)

We Support many third-party SEF plugins via the standard Joomla installer.
Components we support natively include: VirtueMart, K2, FlexiContent, Kunena, Jomsocial, Community Builder and more.

Write a review

Easier than I thougtht

Jeremy (10).
Posted on 10 July 2010

I am new to .htacess and SEF I was very afraid of using SEF as I tried another extension in the past and it was not good.

IT worked right away with very few settings. I did how ever run into some very strange problems about a day later. Everything on the front end worked great but the admin panel login was stuck in a loop. Mostly due to the SSL settings. I changed on setting and it worked again. I also installed it when with my dedicated IP and I think that also caused a problem becuase I had to change from the IP to the domain url. I fought with it for about 2 days with different settings and I discovered that I had another set of files from the old ip and one for my current url. I deleted the old and all seems to work as I was having issues with SSL in the front end not directing properly and "invalid token" issues. Most of my day was spent trying to ID the problem in forums to no avail. Then I discovered the extra files. Now it is all good....So far.

Pros: very easy for someone who really didn't know anything about SEF. Besides the config problems of the right settings it went pretty good.

Cons: Support was prompt in the forums for my issues, but I actually found my answers by trial and error or from another forum minuets before getting a support reply. I am used to more one on one support. So not really a con, just not what I am used to. But they did respond timely.

Bottom Line: I'm not sorry I bought it. I would get it again.

A must have

jokrsolutions (10).
Posted on 30 June 2010

Sh404SEF is sooo great, if you seriously want to compete on Google with your website you must have SH404SEF. It would be good if you could have more settings for SEF tweaking in the Joomla core -but this is not the case. So, this leave you to have some SEF extension to build your SEF-URLs the way you like it, SH404SEF will help you with this.

SH404SEF is available to a reasonable price and you got great support from their forum.

Pro:

Support for many third-party extensions, including Jomsocial, Virtuemart etc

Many settings

Cons:

Can be hard to get started, there are many settings, it takes lots of trying and several sites to build the perfect SEF-URLs for your website.

Does a lot, but can't pick and choose with Joomla native SEF

Chris Fitz (2).
Posted on 28 June 2010

This extension took a while for me to figure and out and use effectively, but i decided ultimately not to use it because of its incompatibility with a number of components i was using, Lyftens Blog and Sim Gallery. I also had a hard time adapting it to my needs in Community Builder. The most disappointing was that i couldn't use this extension selectively with the native Joomla SEF which worked the best for most of my URL naming across all components (except Community Builder). The search continues....

Owner's reply: hi csfitz
Sorry to hear you're still searching :) However, while looking at sh404sef it seems you missed the "By components" settings page ? that's where you select whether to build urls using sh404sef built inplugins, joomla native router.php files, a simple default url encoding or even to leave them non-sef. And you do that on a component by component basis - plus you also select whether to translate urls if using joomfish, and more...
Rgds

Native Plugins

Rene (8).
Posted on 20 June 2010

The sh404 Extension works good, but the Native Myblog and Jomsocial Plugin (Version: 1.5.10.446) works not to 100% correct. Please check if all Jomsocial links are correctly translated. The Native Jomsocial Plugin produce also SEF Urls for Private Messages. ;-( That makes absolutely no sense! The MyBlog Plugin is not up-to-date and should be checked again for proper function.

Owner's reply: Hi testcouch
From your post on our forum, I realize you have been testing a 3 month old sh404sef version. Our plugin for MyBlog is currently absolutely up to date.
More generally, you should consider the following :
1 - from your forum post, I understand that "works not to 100% correct" means "all urls are not made SEF". That's not what we are trying to do, but only turn SEf those urls that requires it - see item #2 also
2 - it does makes sense to have some of the messaging urls to be sef. Urls are not made SEF only for search engines and SEO results, but also for users. Though I usually try to have as few SEF urls as possible, there are exceptions and private messaging can be one of them
Thank you for your positive review anyway and all the best

Good extension, problem fix here

Erin (7).
Posted on 17 June 2010

This is a cool component. Like other commenters have said it does slow things down a little, but like the developers said it's not really an appreciable difference. The ability to customize your 404 page and suggest other, similar pages to viewers is invaluable! A component that allows this to happen is worth a few seconds extra loading time.

Two things that made me briefly nuts that I'd cue new users into. If you're making changes regarding links (like a linked photo gallery) clear the sh404sef cache or it will serve you up the old, cached pages without the changes. Secondly, if you get the following error:

Warning: file_get_contents(*your site path*/components/com_sh404sef/cache/shCacheContent.shlock) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in *your site path*/components/com_sh404sef/shCache.php on line 138

it will be fixed by changing the permissions on the /components/com_sh404sef/cache folder to 775. I didn't see anything about either of the "problems" I had in the literature and extensive searching brought me only one relevant link on the latter problem so I thought I'd share them here (in addition to the anything digital forum) to help out so that people can use and enjoy this great extension.

very nice tool

RScythe (3).
Posted on 16 June 2010

This tool is amazing, was very simple for me to setup and so far has been running smoothly. I dont have any clashs with any other installed components and I love the extra security features that it provides. I would recommend.

Best seo component I've met so far

Alexander (1).
Posted on 09 May 2010

With option "New Meta" I've resolved all my problems. Now I have practically full control over sef urls in my site. Great work, thank you.

Avoid if using Virtuemart

Joshua (1).
Posted on 29 April 2010

My experience with this component was far from pleasing. It seems to operate fine with a basic joomla install, but it's interaction with components and plugins is fair at best. I had nothing but trouble with virtuemart. They have a forum dedicated to virtuemart troubles. Why is there not a forum for any other components? Why is the virtuemart forum full of posts requesting help and suggesting things don't work? Save your money if you plan to use this with virtuemart.

Owner's reply: Hi
We have a sub-forum dedicated to Virtuemart just because sh404sef is used by very many Virtuemart users, and has a long record of performing very well with it, to the point where I even made a dedicated meta data plugin for it. We also handle quite well some of the peculirities of Virtuemart. That you run into difficulties when using Vituemart and sh404sef I won't deny, however setting up a full shop is not an easy task, and may involve many different things. For your information, we do not have a single bug report filed related to Virtuemart and it has been so for several weeks.

Rgds

Awful...yes awful

Antonio Casamassa (4).
Posted on 28 April 2010

Perhaps one of the most non user friendly and completely frustrating mods available today across the entire cms board, so bad its painful. My argument is this, a good seo mod should of course be flexible but at the same time it should be easy to make the simple changes you desire, this mod makes changing a simple article, category and section meta data a nightmare, I could go on but of course there is not much point, you get the message avoid this junk at all costs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Owner's reply: Hi,
I am sorry you could not get to grips with sh404sef, but I also feel quite extreme to call "junk' an extension just because a small piece of it (meta data entry) does not suit you. Also, as a reminder, changing meta data for an article (or any page of your site, whether Joomla content, Virtuemar product, or anything else) is:
1 - lookup the SEF url of the page from the SEF url list
2 - click on "New Meta" from the toolbar
3 - enter page title, description, keywords, robots, language as you see fit on this page, then press Save

I have a hard time thinking about those 3 steps as a "nightmare", but your mileage obviously vary

Rgds

Works and works well, but there's one big thing with it...

Lex Thoonen (1).
Posted on 16 April 2010

The component works as promised, but it literally took me months to find out it was to blame for the ridiculous slowness of my site. My site gets more or less 6000 visitors a day, and has a kunena forum on it. Enabling sh404sef on all pages on the site caused page loads of over 10 seconds, sometimes even more than 20 seconds. I've lost quite a few visitors and even regular posters on the forum over the slowness of my site. Disabling sh404sef for the forum seems to have sped up the whole site. I'm now looking if disabling it for the whole site speeds the site further up. If necessary, I'll do it as I don't believe the SEO advantage of it as much as a lot of people.

I'm writing this, as it might "speed up" somebody else finding the cause of the slowness of his/her site.

Owner's reply: Hi
Sorry about all the time you lost on this. Dues to this very nature (storing url pairs in the database), sh404sef and all other sef extensions that use the same process do add some overhead to a web site, just like Joomla sef add some overhead to sites compared to having no sef at all. Forums are actually the worst extensions to work with because users creates posts all the time. With database-backed sef extensions, it is the creation of a url that takes time. When it is created, it is easy and fast to retrieve from the DB.
All that said, I'd like to point out :
- support for Kunena has only been added to sh404sef a couple of weeks ago, meaning you have been using either a 3rd-party Kunena plugin or even Joomla router.php files. This is really a worst case scenario for speed
- to put things in perspective, my own tests on Kunena shows that sh404sef add about 20% to 25% overhead over Joomla SEF. That is usually something that can be handled by hosting, but may require indeed additional resources in case such as yours, with failry heavy load.
Rgds

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sh404SEF

Version:: 4.24.7
Developer:: Yannick Gaultier
Last updated:: Jul 26 2023
1 year ago
Date added:: May 27 2007
License:: GPLv2 or later
Type:: Paid download
Related extension :: 4SEF
Includes:: c p
Compatibility:: J3

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Uses Joomla! Update System

Demo Support Documentation

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