I had the same problems with 4.8. I disbled the SMF Bridge component in SEF Advance and replaced the original Joomla sef.php in the includes folder and atleast have it working in the rest of the site and can post in forums again!
Hopefully this issue will get worked out.

Hag

http://www.hagadoo.com

I replaced the sef.php that was in the /includes/ folder on the server, with the one that was in the Joomla 1.0.12 package in the /includes/ folder.

Hag

Hello all,

This issue has been resolved now.

The problem was not that SEF Advance stripped POST variables, the problem was that SMF bridge was sending the form to an URL without trailing slash.
And, as you might know, SEF Advance redirects all requests without trailing slash to the URL with slash to create default directory server behavior.
Then, when sent to a new page with slash, POST variables were no longer present and login would fail.
Everything can be fixed by adding the trailing slash to the URL in SMF Bridge action form, but I decided to even put the fix in SEF Advance so such URLs are supported for posting. So I added a redirect prevention if POST variables are sent.

If you download the latest version (4.8.1) you will find this issue fixed. You can just replace files:
./components/com_sef/sef_incl.php
./administrator/components/com_sef/sef.xml

Hi mailalon,

Can you please contact me on mail with your admin password and FTP info.

Thanks.

Hello Alon,

It has been solved on your site now.

For other users having the same problem with links ending up in 404 errors I describe the solution.

Problem:
- SEF URLs are stripped by the trailing slash
- SEF Advance is not redirecting to slashed version because of the dots in URLs (thinking there are extensions)
- The URL ends up in 404 error

Solution:
- Don't strip trailing slash:
  In file components/com_smf/smf.php on line 235 change:
    $sefurl = substr($sefurl, 0, strlen($sefurl)-1);
    to:
    $sefurl = substr($sefurl, 0, strlen($sefurl));

OK, will have a look on that too.

Hi Emir,
Thanks for your help on this. I wouldn't mind avoiding sef links for the smf forum but the real trouble is that from some reason even if you select in sef advance to ignore the bridge component it still put sef links inside the forum itself and gives 404 errors.

therefor, someone who runs sef advance can't run smf bridged and vice versa. as a site owner you have to choose if to run sef links or smf which is a hard choice as long as their is no really a good forum to joomla.

Alon