Some urls work and some do not using JoomSEF which really should work. I suspect the problem is in the rewrites in the .htaccess file.

Here are URLs in question:
allmedphysicians.com/policies/index.html (Works)
allmedphysicians.com/policies/ (Gives 404 error)
allmedphysicians.com/policies (Gives 404 error)

In my mind these should all three be working the same. They are essentially paths to the same place.

Has anybody using JoomSEF been able to solve this problem through configurations of JoomSEF or modifying the .htaccess file?

I eagerly await a solution!

Thanks, Sean Carney

Hello Sean,

actually, you are a bit wrong on this.
When we would be talking about \"real\" path on the web server, where index.html is set as default directory root file and if your web server would be tolerant to the trailing space (mostly it is, but it does not have to be), then you could say that those 3 URLs should be working the same.

However, JoomSEF does not follow any real server path and works in a bit different way. It works clearly with virtual URLs, assigning 1 SEF URL to 1 non-SEF URL. Thus, JoomSEF will consider URLs allmedphysicians.com/policies/index.html and allmedphysicians.com/policies/ to be different URLs. (and they really can be - you can assign different non-SEF URLs to each of them them)

The latter 2 - allmedphysicians.com/policies/ and allmedphysicians.com/policies will be considered same by JoomSEF if you have set \"be tolerant to trailing slash\" to ON.

I undestand this might be confusing to users trying to enter some URLs manually. I would recommend you to change the configuration of JoomSEF not to use \"index.html\" as default \"index\" page. Just find this field in configuration and instead of \"index.html\", leave it empty.

Then the \"index.html\" will not be used for the \"index\" pages and users should see just URLs like allmedphysicians.com/policies/.

Please note, that to see the changes, you need to purge the affected URLs from JoomSEF DB after modifing the configuration. (be carefull about that, we recommend not to purge all of the exising URLs automatically, but modyfiing just those, that need to be manually and storing the changes as 301 redirects -- you could also use them to solve this; however the decision depends on size and how well is your site already indexed with search engines -- if your site is new or still in development, it would be easier to purge everything).

Michal,

I am very happy for the trick you showed me to just remove index.html from the default index file field. This worked to remove the first problem although now the old index.html pages don't work but that I can live with. I would rather have short urls.

Also, I have a couple versions of ARTIO JoomSEF on a few different sites. My two sites that are using version 1.2.5 are working perfectly for http://softanswertaichi.com/about-teacher/ and http://softanswertaichi.com/about-teacher to both show the same page. I am very happy about this. There was no setting in that older version about \"be tolerant to trailing slash\" but it is working well without that setting. This is for me http://A-1accommodations.com and my http://SoftAnswerTaiChi.com sites.

My other site, AllMedPhysicians.com is running using ARTIO JoomSEF version 2.2.4 and that version is not working, even though it is set for \"Be tolerant to trailing slash?\" equals \"Yes\" . In that version the following two urls (http://allmedphysicians.com/policies/ and http://allmedphysicians.com/policies) are not both working. The one without the trailing slash is broken and giving a 404 error. Perhaps I need to move that site to the older version but I hate to do that. Maybe there is a fix coming soon? Has this maybe been fixed in a later version? Do you have any more good advice on this?

Thank you so much for your help and your reply!

Sean

I just upgraded to ARTIO JoomSEF v2.2.5 in hopes this might get fixed but it did not change anything. Thanks for looking into this.

Hello,

the trailing slash working / not working can also be influenced by server configuration. Are both the sites you mention running on the same server?

We will test this on our testing installations as well.

The two sites that are working properly are on a different server than the one site that is not working properly.

The site that is not working properly is hosted with SiteGround.com

So, you are right... it could be the hosting company that is causing the problem. They are supposed to be a big Joomla hosting company but maybe they haven't configured their apache yet to work optimally with your software.

Thanks, Sean