Now using: Kunena 5.0.7, Joomla 3.7.0, JoomSEF
My old backlinks were created with: Kunena 1.x, Joomla 1.0.12, sh404SEF
Objectives:
1) Use search engine friendly URLs in Joomla and Kunena, without ID numbers in the URL.
2) Do not break old backlinks.
Problems:
1) Without an SEF extension, my URLs contained undesirable Joomla article ID numbers or Kunena topic ID numbers. Therefore, I needed an SEF extension.
2) With JoomSEF (which is good and free), Kunena URLs contained section names in the URLS, which broke my old backlinks.
Solution:
1) In Joomla 3.7.0 backend / System / Global Configuration / Site / SEO Settings
Search Engine Friendly URLs = yes
Use URL Rewriting = yes
Adds Suffix to URL = yes (This made Joomla receptive to .html file suffixes, but did not create suffixes, which is good. After thought: Adds Suffix turned out not to be necessary because I modified .htaccess in Item #4, below. So Adds Suffix is optional for this purpose.)
2) In Kuena 5.0.7 backend / Confuration / General / Basic Settings / SEO Settings
Search Engine Friendly URLS = yes
Direct Component Access = No
Support Legacy URLs = Kunena 1.x
3) Use JoomSEF.
3.a) Enable Artio seo Kunena forum plugin
3.b) Joomla backend / Component / Artio JoomSEF / Manage Extension / Kunena Forum (open it) / Extension / Category Settings / Add Categories to URL = Only last one. This takes the Section Name out of Kunena URLs when JoomSEF is enabled. It made Kunena URLs compatible with my old backlilnks.
4) I had to trim .html suffixes off of incoming backlink URLs, because Kunena would not find the file. So, in the .htaccess file, I added
## Mod_rewrite in use.
RewriteEngine On
## --- begin REMOVE HTML SUFFIXES ---
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ /$1 [L,R=301]
## --- end REMOVE HTML SUFFIXES ---
Results:
1. Joomla Content articles use SEF URLs with no ID numbers
2. Joomla accepts old URLs with .html file suffixes, and Joomla does not create new .html suffixes, which is good.
3. Kunena uses SEF URLs, with only an ID number at the very end of the URL
4. Kunana URLs do not contain Section Names (that were inserted by JoomSEF). So, Kunena URLs are compatible with my old backlinks.
5. Kunena accepts URLs with .html suffixes (because my htaccess file trimed off the URL suffixes), which preserves my old, incoming backlinks.
Notes:
1) Sometimes you have to go to an article or topic on your website in order for JoomSEF to create the SEF URL the first time. You can have a crawler do this for you when your create a site map. Xenu Link Sleuth is good for this. It is free, runs on your local computer, and can be downloaded from Cnet.com.
2) I changed the name of my forum, which required URL redirects, but that is another story which I
posted in Joomla.org
3) This process seems like a long way around to get the results that I needed, but this is what finally worked after a lot to trial runs. This post might help someone, and it will remind me of what I have done.
