Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Please go through the answers before contacting us for support.

General How does your license work? Can I buy a product once and use it on several sites? I am buying a second license with the same PayPal account. What about updates in the future? Is your source code encrypted? I get a blank screen... What is your upgrade and support policy?	SEF Advance I get strange characters in my URLs, can... How can I get advanced URLs for my compo... I have problems with dynamic modules/pat... What do I need to run SEF Advance? Does it mean that I can't modify the scr...
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SEF Advance

What do I need to run SEF Advance?
If you successfully run Joomla! / Mambo on your web site just make sure that you can run basic built-in SEF (Apache mod_rewrite). You will also need ionCube support. If your server doesn't already have it you just need to upload a free loader to your site.

I get Error 404 Not Found
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 try replacing it with the one included in the package. This file should be uploaded in ASCII mode.
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 cofigurations allow .htaccess override. More info about activating basic SEF in Joomla! / Mambo can be found here: SEF forum.

I get Error 500 Internal Server Error
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. More info about activating basic SEF in Joomla! / Mambo can be found here: SEF forum.

I get Error 403 Forbidden Error
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

I get The file /path/to/your/site/components/com_sef/sef_func.php is corrupted.
If you upload SEF Advance and get a message that some of its files are corrupted please update the Ioncube loaders on your site/server. Latest loaders can be found here: http://www.ioncube.com/loaders.php.
Also please read answer to the next question.

I get "The file /path/components/com_sef/sef_func.php cannot be decoded by this version of the ionCube Loader. If you are the administrator of this site then please install the latest version of the ionCube Loader.".
You are using an old version of Ioncube loader on your site (< v3.1).
If you use dynamic loading please download new loaders and replace the old ones in the directory /ioncube/ on the root of your site.
However if you had Ioncube loader installed on your server you will have to ask your server administrator to upgrade the Ioncube loader in php.ini. It will not work to just upload the new loaders to the site since system will give priority to the server version. The loader installed in php.ini has to be upgraded then.
The most recent version of ionCube loaders can be downloaded at: http://www.ioncube.com/loaders.php
SEF Advance tester will tell you which version of ionCube loader you have installed.

The components loads in the frontend but in the backend I get "Site error: the file /path/administrator/components/com_sef/admin.sef.php requires the ionCube PHP Loader to be installed by the site administrator."
On some host you need to upload a local php.ini file to the administrator directory which would point the files to correct ionCube loaders directory. Our ionCube installation guide should provide more info on this.

Can I run SEF Advance on IIS?
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.

Can I buy SEF Advance for one domain and switch to another domain later?
Yes, but you will have to cease using SEF Advance on the old domain. Contact us and we will re-license your file.

Is SEF Advance's source code encrypted?
The source code is protected with ionCube encoding technology. If your server doesn't already support ionCube encoded files, in most cases it's enough to just upload a free loader to your site and SEF Advance will work. Read more in our ionCube installation guide.

Does it mean that I can't modify the script?
You can edit various configuration settings described in SEF Advance documentation in order to make URLs look according to your preference. Other than these you can't modify SEF Advance logic. Normally this isn't something that you would want to edit anyway.

I get domain error message...
If you get domain error message you are trying to run SEF Advance on other domain than the one you purchased it for. You will have to buy another licence for the new domain. If you have parked or alias domains that point to the same site (like domain.com and domain.net) contact us to re-license your file for the alias domain.

I have parked domains that point to the same site. Do I have to buy a separate license for each domain?
In case of parked domains SEF Advance must be licensed for each domain. If two domains point to exactly the same site you can get a file licensed for both without additional charges. Please note that this means 2-3 parked domains, not 10! If you have many parked domains pointing to the same site use a simple redirect instead.

I have a test site for development. Can I get SEF Advance licensed to it as well?
Yes. This can be your local site (localhost) or a test site on internet, however on obvious test domain or subdomain. Contact us and we will add the test domain to your license.

Can I get help with installing SEF Advance?
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.

I didn't get .htaccess file...
.htaccess file is distributed inside the SEF Advance zip package you received. If you can't see it maybe you are on Mac or Linux which automatically hides all files that begin with a dot. You should make your file manager show hidden files. In the zip package you can also find the htaccess.txt file which you can upload and rename on server instead. Note that extra .htaccess is not needed for SEF Advance 2008 for Joomla! 1.5. On Joomla! 1.5 the htaccess.txt file that came with Joomla! will work, just make sure it's been renamed to .htaccess.

I can't open the zip archive I got...
If you want to unpack the zip file please use WinZip. Programs like 7-zip and possibly some others may not be able to open the archive correctly. However, you don't have to open the file locally at all, just upload the zip file directly through Joomla! / Mambo component installer.

Will SEF Advance slow down my website?
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. The file itself is ionCube encoded but that doesn't slow it down, in fact in some cases it even improves the performance.

How does SEF Advance perform on high-traffic, large sites with much content?
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.

I have problems with dynamic modules/pathway/submenus/parameters when I click on some links...
The dynamic modules in Joomla! / Mambo 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, blog, item or component must be added to menu and published, with public access.
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. For more info about Itemid refer to this post: http://forum.mamboserver.com/showpost.php?p=189990

I am redirected to homepage (404 page) when I click on certain links?
Usual reason for this behaviour is your custom URL replacement settings. If you, for example, have replacement "æ=>ae" then neither of your regular titles must contain string "ae". The title "aero" would not work since the system would look for "æro" in the database and, when not found, redirect you to "not found 404" page. To avoid this behaviour try to have replacements that don't occur in regular titles. For example "æ=>aaee".

After installing SEF Advance some content prompts me to login first even though it's set to public...
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.

I get strange characters in my URLs, can I skip those?
SEF Advance encodes the URL and special characters, like punctuation, become %11, %92 etc.
You can't completely skip the characters from the URL because of the nature of SEF Advance internal working, being a logic based and not database storage dependent SEF solution, for performace reasons.
But there are several ways of avoiding having encoded characters in URLs:
1) Define encode exceptions.
If excepted, the special characters will not be URL encoded. For example, if the question mark is excepted, it will show as "?" and not as "%3F" in the URL. This option can not be used on all special characters.
2) Put a replacement for a special character under "URL replace" in SEF Advance configurations.
For example, if you use hyphen as word separator, the regular hyphens are URL encoded. To avoid that you could put something like "-=>_" in replace field. This way all hyphens that occur in article titles will get replaced by underscores, thus avoiding hyphens shown as "%11". Of course, then you can't have underscores in your titles but they may be less frequent in your titles.
3) Use short URLs (title alias) setting.
Then you are required to always enter a clean version of your article title with latin chars only which is done automatically in Joomla 1.5. This is also the best option for non-latin sites like russian, chinese, arabic etc.
4) Define manual alias.
Whereever you notice strange URL you can manually enter the alias for that URL and it will be used instead. Of course, this solution is not automatic.

When I go to a non-existing URL it returns "302 redirect" instead of "404 not found" to search engines...
SEF Advance will return correct "404 not found" headers to engines for non-existing URLs if you setup an internal page or a physical file as 404 page in configurations.
In all other cases 302 redirect header will be returned.
To setup an internal 404 page just select it from the drop-down list and save. To set a physical file follow these instructions:
1) Make a custom 404.html file and upload it to root
2) In SEF Advance configurations, Custom 404 file, enter 404.html (no leading slash or http://)
3) Save the configurations.
SEF Advance will now return correct "404 not found" and include your custom 404 page. Please test this with Firefox as IE may return its own default 404 page instead.

I have used built-in SEF for a while and my old links are spread everywhere. Will they still work when I install SEF Advance?
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.

How to link correctly in Joomla! / Mambo?
When you create an internal hyperlink in your Joomla! or Mambo (4.5.1 or higher) content always enter a relative, non-sef URL. A correct example would be:
<a href="index.php?option=com_content...">link</a>
The built-in mambot will then automatically translate 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! / Mambo. 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.

IE locks me out and crashes when I login?
Are you using HTMLArea 3, XHTML suite or TMEdit as default WYSIWYG editor?
These editors don't play along with SEF and IE. You have two options: use another editor (can be changed in the configurations) or modify your template following these instructions:
Find this code in your template's index.php file:
<?php
if ( $my->id ) {
initEditor();
}
?>
Move it to be above this line:
<?php mosShowHead(); ?>

The page dies, displaying only a few form fields when I try to edit an article in administration.
Do you use WYSIWYG Pro editor? Please upgrade it to latest version (September 07 or later). This will fix the problem.

Will SEF Advance work for 3rd party components?
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 standart built-in SEF.

How can I get advanced URLs for my component?
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.

Can you develop SEF Advance extension for 3rd party component I need?
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.

Which components are compatible with SEF Advance?
A list of some 3rd party components that utilitize SEF Advance extensions can be found here.

How do I upgrade to new version of SEF Advance?
First, export your settings under the backup option in SEF Advance configuration. Then uninstall the old version and install the new one through Joomla!/Mambo component installer. Finally, go the backup again and import your settings back.

I installed the free trial and decided to buy retail version. Do I have to reinstall the component or is there a quicker way?
Instead of reinstalling the component you can manually replace the license file (using FTP):
./components/com_sef/key.txt
Or you can reinstall but previously export your settings in the SEF Advance backend so you can restore them after the upgrade.

Is SEF Advance compatible with Joomla! 1.5 or Mambo 4.6?
SEF Advance is compatible with Joomla! 1.0 and Mambo 4.5/4.6 series. SEF Advance 2008 is compatible with Joomla! 1.5 natively.

I have another problem.
If you can't find the solution to your problem here please search the forum where you can also ask for help. You may also want to consult the old forum which contains answers to many user questions.
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.

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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, SilverfishLongboa...

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