SEF Advance is Joomla SEF component which extends its built-in Search Engine Friendly URL functionality and raises it on a higher level. Instead of ordinary Joomla URLs which are often strange and inconsistent, you will get human friendly URLs in form of:
http://www.site.com/category/subcategory/article/
Because URLs consist of meaningful keywords rather than numbers, SEF Advance will drastically improve your search engine positions.
SEF Advance is the only pure-logic SEF solution, not relying on database for URL storage, resulting in stunning performance. Being developed, improved and supported for 10 years by a core developer of Joomla! and Mambo, it is the oldest and most reliable Joomla SEF component available.
Supporting them natively or with free extensions, SEF Advance improves URLs even for many 3rd party components for Joomla. See what others are saying about SEF Advance and check out the DEMO.
- SEF Advance improves your site's search engines ranking
Because your URLs will consist of content titles rather than numbers, SEF Advance will drastically increase your site's search engine positions.
It will also give you nice looking, human readable URLs which are easier to memorize. - SEF Advance is simple
You install SEF Advance like any other Joomla! component and you are done.
If you later want to adjust the URLs' look there are many settings at your disposal. - SEF Advance works
SEF Advance covers all aspects of the Joomla! content structure.
Every link on your site will be converted including section and category listings, blogs, archives, paginations and all core components, even links within your content.
API support for 3rd party components is integrated so even 3rd party components can take advantage of advanced SEF URLs. - SEF Advance is powerful
After you've installed SEF Advance all links of your Joomla! site have been instantly converted to advanced SEF. You don't need to do anything else, like clicking on every single link to convert it or open each page on your website. Every URL has unique address; there are no duplicate URLs (subject to Google's penalties) for the same content. - SEF Advance has stunning performance
SEF Advance is the only pure-logic SEF solution for Joomla! CMS. This means that it does not store any URLs in the database but does conversion on-the-fly. Thus, there are no performance downgrades due to slow database connections, no huge quick-filled tables with duplicate entries, no indexing issues, no slowdowns on big sites with much content. The integrated URL caching system can further reduce the load and improve the performance. - SEF Advance is backwards compatible
SEF Advance will run on Joomla! 3.x and 2.5. There are older versions available even for Joomla 1.5 and 1.0.
If you have an older install on your site which works well for you, and you don't want to bother upgrading other than to improve the looks of the URLs, you can rest assured that SEF Advance will run on your site.
SEF Advance is compatible with standard built-in SEF. If you already have a site using built-in SEF which search engines have already indexed, don't worry - SEF Advance will automatically redirect all requests for old links to their correspondent advanced URLs. - SEF Advance is being developed by Joomla! (former Mambo) core developer
As SEF Advance is being developed by former core developer of Joomla! with in-depth knowledge of the system, you can be sure that this component is using latest system standards. - SEF Advance has been developed and improved for over 10 years
SEF Advance has been actively developed, improved, tested and maintained since 2003.
During this time it has evolved following Joomla's development path and been cleared of many bugs and problems. The long development time assures that SEF Advance is functional and carefully tested by many users over the time. - SEF Advance is supported
If you have problems with the component you can get personal help from the Joomla! core developer.
I love it because it is very fast and does not blow my database.
Steffen Werner, IT-Maximierer
This is some awesome software! I will be buying more licenses in the future for all my websites that I make.
Steven Ayers, lamamarket.com
Not only is SEF Advance the best choice for SEF URL's for your website, but it is backed up by Emir's fast and efficient support. Thank you so much for your recent help Emir, you are a champion!
Rob Barton, thegreendirectory.com.au
We're quite impressed with the level of support you've offered over the years for SEF Advance. Your commitment to improving and updating SEF Advance has been fantastic. SEF Advance has certainly come a long way over the years. It continues to be a core component that every new website we deploy relies upon.
Jim Sheridan, Worldwide TeleNet
Your SEF Advance is a great work! I love it. All my pages where I used it are TOP on Google!
Michael Hoffmann, electronical Services Hoffmann
I just purchased two copies of SEF Advance after testing it this week. Brilliant job by the way. I have tried all the others and ran into many problems.
Brian Edwards, Musclecarfacts.net
Wow, that was unbelievably easy to set up. It took me less than 20 minutes from receiving your email to getting my site up and running! It was well worth the money. Congratulations on a super product!
Dominic Dumée, antibody-software.com
I want to thank you for creating such a great product. I would have no idea why everyone would not have SEF Advance installed on their Joomla! website. Love it!
Dennis Hosang, hosangit.com
I have loaded the SEF Advance and am very impressed with how easy it is to use. I was also impressed with the tracking of 404 errors and what url was typed in that gets redirected. Thanks for making a great product.
Ron Heims, successinsiders.com
I want to say your SEF component is AWESOME! We love it, and we're going to move all of our sites to it immediately. We've tried them all, and your is fantastic. We really, really love it!
Lance Barton, takingoverhollywood.com
I've used SEF Advance on my main site and the results have been spectacular. It has made a difference to the way Google has indexed my site already. And I've tried all SEF components, nothing compares to SEF Advance!
Peter Ross, alliance.org.au
I am very impressed with your wonderful product. I installed the demo and it was working perfectly so I just purchased it!
Bill Welsh, empireaviation.net
Thanks. We are very impressed with your component.
Patrick Walsh, furniture.ie
Thanks for your time and a great component. It's a pleasure to use something that works!
Joshua, makingamillion.biz
Just wanted to say thanks for your work with SEF Advance!
We run several big sites in Denmark and are really dependent on having great and up to date sites. SEF Advance is one of the most stable components we rely on for all our sites and we really appreciate your continuous work on making SEF Advance even better!Kenneth Lund, bryllup.dk
SEF Advance is beautiful and is working excellent!
Kay Ritchey, suburbanhousehunters.com
Your program has been very valuable and your free upgrades are wonderful. Thanks!
Jason D. Baker, bakerlearning.com
I was using 'a competing product' and I wasn't happy with the speed. I installed the demo of SEF Advance and liked it so much that I had my boss buy it for our site. Thanks for a great product!
Malakai Kingston, SilverfishLongboarding.com
Wow, what an awesome product. I downloaded the trial and quickly decided to purchase.
Stanley Goeing, kylawpractice.com
Great component, can't believe how much simpler it is vs. 'a competing product'!
Colin Gourlay, electric-playground.com
We have had a look at the trial version and it is a SUPERB component - congratulations - we hope it is very successful for you.
Robert Moores, eyewearsystems.co.uk
The component worked like a wonderful charm. Love it and thank you. It is totally worth every dime.
Georgina Jackson, onlymyemail.com
SEF Advance is the best 40 Euros I've spent, a five minute install and I now have perfectly Search Engine Friendly URL's. Works like a charm. Thanks!
David Kay, backissuesheaven.com
SEF Advance is superb! I'd be lost without it.
Carl Briggs, TheTranceArena.com
SEF Advance component has proved to be the most powerful automated Search Engine Friendly optimization tool in the web industry.
siteground.com
Thanks for a wonderful component - it works great.
Yuco, docmagic.com
Great work on this product, 40 Euros is a small price to pay (for me) for nice URLs.
Steve Soltz, sskcreatives.com
The product works wonderfully and any problem I encountered was prompty fixed by Emir. Thank you very much for the fantastic product and amazing service!
Jan van Voorst, planetsave.com
You get two thumbs up from me, and your SEF Advance is great! I'll be buying a couple of more licenses in the future.
Kevin, rollingpaperdepot.com
Kudos on an awesome product. I had been using 'a competing product' and hated it. SEF Advance is well worth the money.
Douglas Boldt, mergemedia.net
I'm just trying out the trial of SEF Advance for a new client site and I'm very impressed. This is actually the first SEF component that has seemed to work without a hitch, so I'll be purchasing this for all future client projects.
Torry, soundloop.com
It took me about 5 minutes between testing your component and purchasing it. I am delighted at how well it is working. We have 2000 content items, about 3000 daily visitors and support for 5 languages with Joomfish. I tried several other SEF components, and none would work right. They all broke at some point. The sheer amount of URLs they were generating was driving me crazy and worried about search engines thinking I was spamming them.
Carlos Hassan, reade.com
As always, you and your software amaze me!
Jonathan Dimock, corpwebhost.com
You are a nice programmer and this component is great. Thank you!
Rajeshkannan MJ Vijayalakshmi, extremetemplates.com
I have purchased your SEF Advance script some time ago. I am very satisfied with it. Easy to handle and brings at least twice as many visors as without it. Congratulations.
Matthias Janeck, budapestagent.com
SEF Advance is the best thing since sliced cheese! Thanks for the great work - don't know where the internet would be without you!
Jason, catchingmercury.com
Thanks for this great product, works well.
Chijo Takeda, dogpawstudio.com
I am amazed how easy you have made this, great work and it goes without say that I will be using it for future sites. I didn't even have to update the links, thats just top. Great component. Thanks.
Mohinderpal Liddar, positivehands.co.uk
Love your product! It helped me invaluably on getting my PR up.
Richard Brown, replicawatchreport.com
Emir, You are a genius. I tried the free SEF components and they both failed miserably. This works like a charm. Thank you!!
Sid Smith, bwords.com
How great it is to see thousands of my website links turned into search engine friendly, nice looking, human readable URLs which are easier to memorize. Thank You and excellent job!
Michael Lee, guidebuy.com
I am thrilled with SEF Advance. As far as I am concerned SEF Advance is what makes the whole Joomla CMS worthwhile, without it your mediocre, with it you're an SEO contender.
Yvonne Bailey, ebizcentralnetwork.com
Unbelievable! Five minute install and it works pricelessly. I assumed I would have to modify some content or change things on the site around a little, but SEF Advance is amazing! Thank you for all your work and the great product.
Jonathan Dimock, corpwebhost.com
Awesome component!
Marc David, beginningbodybuilding.com
Great product; I had it up and running in 15 minutes. Best $50 I've spent in a long time!
Richard Brown, replicawatchreport.com
Great piece of code
Tom Rose, thrcomputer.com
Best buy I've ever done!
brandblast.com
It works like a dream. I just can say, 40 Euros were a good investment.
Karl Stöckl, baddeutsch-altenburg.at
Great stuff! Worked like a charm and super easy to install. I'll be back for more after some prospective clients get a look at this.
Greg, Page Green Internet Services
Saka helped us out and we really appreciate it! SEF Advance is a great piece of software.
Brian Sooy, Brian Sooy & Co.
I know there are other versions emerging, but I gotta tell you. I tried two or three of them and had nothing but grief. SEF SEO support using SEF Advance, while it may cost, was a 'install it and forget it' solution. When I did have problems Saka was right there to help.
Tjay
Fantastic update, I'd been hoping for this! Thanks again, great product.
Noah Kuhn, atbc.bc.edu
The decision to move to Mambo was based entirely on the SEF functionality your component delivers -- and I'm happy to say .. everything has been working great.
Shri, georeviews.com
Thanks for the great product, It is seriously amazing how well it works with Google.
Jay Addison, BCFarms.com
I do want to thank you for pursuing this matter for me. That level of customer attention really makes it worth the purchase price.
Kurt Reigle, work-at-home-source.com
AWESOME PRODUCT, search on EVDO in Google and you will see EVDOInfo is all over.
Michael Ginsberg, evdoinfo.com
Thank you once again for your excellent product and your prompt and responsive sales and support service. You have made it very easy for us to move forward with our business in supporting our clients and providing them with a world class solution. I would be very please to recommend such a professional product and support such as yours. Many thanks again for Emir.
Peter Burgess, OzeHost Internet
SEF Advance established an application interface (API) for 3rd party components to enable and take advantage of advanced, human friendly URLs. This interface has been adopted by all other, later appeared, SEF components and became a standard.
An extension file called sef_ext.php should be created and placed in the component's main directory. If found, SEF Advance will pick up the extension and use it for creating and reverting SEF URLs.
These are SEF Advance extensions for some components or links to 3rd party components that contain the extensions which will produce advanced URLs when used in combination with SEF Advance:
Please note that 3rd party component extensions are not supported by us. For inquiries about components please contact their respective author.
If you are a component developer please refer to our SEF Advance Extensions Guide for information about writing SEF Advance extensions for your own component. Also take a look on the included sef_ext.php example file, as well as on the available extensions for other components.
If you successfully run Joomla! on your web site just make sure that you can run basic built-in SEF (with or without Apache mod_rewrite).
First thing you should check if you get Not Found error is that you have the .htaccess file on your site's root. Note the dot in the beginning!
If you have the file check its content, try replacing it with htaccess.txt included in Joomla package.
If correct .htaccess file is in place then your .htaccess override doesn't work or mod_rewrite module is not activated. Make sure mod_rewrite module is loaded and your server configurations allow .htaccess override.
Make sure you correctly uploaded .htaccess file. It has to be uploaded in ASCII mode! Also make sure that your server configuration allows .htaccess override and that mod_rewrite module is activated.
If you are sure that you correctly uploaded .htaccess file in ASCII mode your server may be missconfigurated forbidding the RewriteRule directive. Try putting following line in your .htaccess file (on the very first row):
Options +FollowSymLinks
SEF Advance is created for Apache web server. Although it has been reported possible to get it working on IIS with some special extensions, we can not offer any support for this configuration.
SEF Advance is very easy to install (just upload it as any other component). However if you need help just contact us. Make sure your server fulfils all the requirements though. We can not assist you to setup mod_rewrite or do server configurations; you should have the built-in SEF working before the purchase.
Apache mod_rewrite commands have certain impact on site load. However, SEF Advance only has a single Apache instruction to point the server to the right file. All logic is purely implemented in PHP. Therefore SEF Advance does not have a significant impact on the server load or speed.
Unlike other SEF components, SEF Advance doesn't store URLs in database to later look them up for conversion. Instead, SEF Advance does all the URL conversions on-the-fly. This method has proven to be more effective in terms of performance because it avoids dealing with database searches on very large, non-indexed, duplicate-entries tables.
Additionally, SEF Advance features disk cache option for further decreasing the load on your database.
SEF Advance has been successfully running on many large sites during the years.
The dynamic modules in Joomla! work on the Itemid concept. It highly depends on the pages you linked to main menu. In order for SEF Advance to find the correct Itemid, the corresponding section / category, blog, item or component must be added to menu and published, with public access.
You don't have to add all articles separately, just can simply create a menu item that links to their root category or section.
If you don't want the links to be visible you can hide them by assigning them to a dummy menu which is not loaded in your template, but the entries must be somewhere in the menu.
You may also need to ensure that you don't have items with duplicate names in the menu. Remove the duplicates (even if they are in different menus). You may also need to empty your trash (make sure that you empty both content and menu trash, they are under separate selections).
Finally, to check which Itemid, if any, is returned activate debug option in SEF Advance configurations.
This indicates that SEF Advance is pulling wrong Itemid from database or no Itemid at all. Make sure that you add all sections (listings or blogs) to main menu. If you don't want them to show you can unpublish them but they must be there.
Also make sure that you don't have duplicate items in the menu. It can happen that you have same links in different menus (e.g. mainmenu and topmenu). In this case delete duplicates and use ordinary relative URLs instead.
Make sure that you empty the trash too as some duplicates may exist there as well.
Yes, the traditional built-in SEF links will still work. SEF Advance will handle requests for old URLs by redirecting to their advanced equivalents. The correct Permanent Redirect header will be returned so search engines will know that they need to replace the old links.
For better ranking on search engines you are encouraged to rewrite the old static links anywhere there you have control. All links within Joomla! / Mambo will change automatically as you install SEF Advance. Even all internal relative non-sef links within the content will be automatically translated to SEF Advance.
When you create an internal hyperlink in your Joomla! content always enter a relative, non-sef URL. A correct example would be:
<a href="/component/content.../?Itemid=111">link</a>
The built-in SEF plugin will then automatically convert this link to SEF Advance.
Note that some editors might override your link. You may want to turn the editor off or view item's HTML code to make sure the link is relative.
The same rule applies when making an internal link in main menu: always use relative, non-sef URL and it will be automatically converted.
By ensuring you are not creating hardcoded static links you gain full control over all links in Joomla. If you later would make a change in your SEF Advance settings all links will follow the new rules and you will not have to worry about any of them being broken.
To find out the non-sef address of the page you want to link to you might want to disable SEF for a moment in your global configurations.
SEF Advance will rewrite core content and all core component URLs to "nice", human friendly, URLs. If the component has SEF Advance extension, it will also get advanced URLs. Otherwise, if component is SEF enabled, its URLs will be same as with standard built-in SEF.
You need to develop SEF Advance extension (sef_ext.php) for your component and put it in the component's main directory. For more info about the extension format read our SEF Advance Extensions Guide.
Yes, but this is subject to additional charges for custom programming. In the first hand you should contact the component's author with request for SEF Advance extension. If he is not willing to do it you can contact me for a quote where cost depends on the component's complexity.
A list of some 3rd party components that utilize SEF Advance extensions can be found here.
If your 3rd party component uses router.php file for core SEF, make sure that you don't have same category names (alias) as the menu entry under which you added this component.
For example, if your component is accessed by http://www.domain.com/resources/ make sure you don't have any category with alias "resources". Otherwise SEF Advance will look for the category instead of finding the component.
If you are on Joomla version 1.7 or later, you can upgrade automatically using one-click-updates. Otherwise, you can upgrade manually: just upload SEF Advance package file on the top of the old installation. If you are on Joomla 1.5 or 1.0, export your settings under the backup option in SEF Advance configuration, uninstall the old version and install the new one through Joomla component installer. Finally, go the backup again and import your settings back.
If you can't find the solution to your problem here please search the forum where you can also ask for help.
If you still have problems you may email us using the contact form. Before contacting us always make sure you are running the latest version of SEF Advance. The issue may already be fixed but you haven't upgraded.