Merged Kunena and SEO: Why would I need ANY third-party SEF plugin?

rodvold wrote:

Plus I'm lazy to put in all the redirects...

rodvold wrote:

Thinking too much makes me lazy also.

rodvold wrote:

I've already mentioned that problem that I have with laziness.

WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Dear sozzled,

Please download sh404sef and test sh404sef at your test server to know more about this wonderful component. This is one of the component which comes under the list of Editor's Pick on JED (recommended by Joomla developers)

It provides many useful features other than nice SEO friendly URLs, like insertion of custom tags in URL, anti-flooding and anti-hacking features.

Coming to your ugly URL:
Sh404sef will transform the kunena post with heading 'Why would I need ANY third-party SEF plugin??' to exactly www.kunena.com/forum/Why-would-I need-ANY-third-party-SEF-plugin??

Even it will provide choice to insert post id for eg

www.kunena.com/forum/Why would I need ANY third-party SEF plugin??
www.kunena.com/forum/ 17168-Why-would-I need-ANY-third-party-SEF-plugin??

And not like

www.kunena.com/forum/Why%20would%20I%20need%20ANY%20third- party%20SEF%20plugin%3F

Coming to CB:

I have not recommended that people must or should remove Community Builder. I have always insisted that people have a choice: they can choose to live with problems and errors caused by incompatible versions of Kunena and Community Builder

Sozzled you mentioned 'Remove it' in reference to cb in your two posts on kunena. You failed to clarify or give explanation for that. But these words sounds as a cautionary words (though it is your personal opinion) particularly to newbies. There is always possibility that New members may take these words seriously and avert to use this wonderful open source component.

So be careful to make any statement on open forum.

I highly respect open source community and their developers like Beat, Nant, Shimusha, franstein, grumblemarc, Matias and many more who are selflessly devoting their valuable time to develop these components for us. It takes months and years to develop component and we must encourage, help them.

Try Sh404sef at your test site. I am sure that you wouldnt hesitate to have sh404sef on your production site.

Check: www.google.com/search?q=Why+would+I+need...ird-party+SEF+plugin

Back in the dark days of J!1.0.x I NEEDED a sef component. Once I upgraded I was suspicious of the performance hit and found that the number of queries was greatly reduced when using the J! cach and removing the 3rd party sef.

I was a big fan of sh404sef, and I still think it is a good solution. Primarily for the metadata and security functions it also includes. I only removed it once I had found alternatives to the http:BL and keyword/title rewriting features that I had come to rely on.

If you are running J!1.5.10 then there are many options including the router.php files that have been submitted on this forum that do basically the same as any SEF component without the DB performance hit.

Since I had been using sh404sef for so long I was concerned about the slight change of urls, but with some additions to my htaccess anything that was 404 was easily redirected.

Thank you everyone. We're really starting to get a much better understanding now.

eezz wrote:

Check: www.google.com/search?q=Why+would+I+need...ird-party+SEF+plugin

So, the fact is, websites that don't use any third-party SEF plugins, like www.kunena.com , don't suffer any penalty in the "search engine" stakes. You can still use Google to extract information from Kunena message forums irrespective of whether these website employ SEO features. Therefore, this nullifies rodvold's point

I don't want to drop [sh404SEF] because I've gotten a large page ranking and don't want to take a hit in the search engines.

These matters notwithstanding, I appreciate that there are other good reasons for using products like sh404SEF but I'm unconvinced that the primary function - turning convoluted URLs into more search-engine friendly ones - is the main reason anymore.

@sunnyjey: I'm not going to respond to your off-topic remarks about my views on Community Builder. If you had read the dozens of messages I've written about CB (not just the two you have singled out, but didn't quote) you would find that I have consistently been a strong supporter of the Community Builder product. You would do well to heed your own advice.

Returning to the discussion topic again :laugh: eezz wrote:

If you are running J!1.5.10 then there are many options including the router.php files that have been submitted on this forum that do basically the same as any SEF component without the DB performance hit.

Are you saying that without the techniques employed in router.php, the standard Joomla SEO functions can result in degraded system performance for Kunena users?

By way of analogy, it's like saying "Everyone needs Vitamin D to prevend disease. Buy 'sozzled™-brand', Vitamin D tablets." Yes, we all need Vitamin D but you can get all you need with half-an-hour's sunlight every day. Why should I buy pills (even "open source" ones) when I can get all I need without additional cost or "management overhead"? :S

Let me summarise my position for clarity: I want to know (and I'm sure there are many other users who would like to know, too) what benefits there are for Kunena by having add-on SEF components.

I want to know this information because, among other reasons, I want to know why the first question the moderators often ask is "Are you using SEF tools?" If SEF tools play such a major role causing problems for Kunena why is that the case and why hasn't something been done to eliminate them as a source? If everyone seems to believe certain SEF tools, like sh404SEF, are the greatest thing since sliced bread, am I missing out? :laugh:

Yes this is pretty interesting topic for me as I have recently stopped using sh404 sef.

Are you saying that without the techniques employed in router.php, the standard Joomla SEO functions can result in degraded system performance for Kunena users?

I have no raw data to support either environment (SEF or non SEF). I don't think using a router.php would be much different to the core SEF. I do know that there are less queries with using the core SEF than when using sh404sef.

A big reason for me to change was that when the option to use nocache on a component (the sh404sef equivalent to defaulting back to the core sef) the kind of URL's generated were like old J!1.0.x style core SEF eg: /component/option,com_kunena (which can cause some problems)

Page rank is not a problem when you use htaccess to 301 search engines to the right pages... eg

This example would redirect an old forum category 3rd party SEF url to a new core sef url, without the loss of page rank.

To answer your question: what benefits there are for Kunena by having add-on SEF components?

As it has been said before, 3rd party SEF is fine for small sites with active administrators with an eye for detail. As the site grows the burden of administering a large table of third party generated URL's can be hard going (Especially when you change something and need to rebuild the redirection table)

You don't need to rewrite any url's, google and any other search engines understands any type of url's just fine, there are many myths about that. Pretty or non pretty url's is absolutely the same thing, who thinks otherwise don't know what is talking about. There are so many myths regarding SEO that is hard for many to see what is good and what's not. Simply put you don't need sh4040sef or joomla built in sef at all. Rewriting url's has absolutely nothing to do with SEO , it's a common mistake and misunderstanding, maybe user friendly url's but nothing more. I can give you many examples of non-sef url's which are very well indexed in google, there are more important aspects.
In conclusion pretty url's for kunena is simply useless.