I have the exact same issue on multiple servers and instances of JoomSEF installations. it has to do with it SEF'ing the admin URLs. it also affects module editing.

I reported it here:
www.artio.net/support-forums/joomsef/com...-html5-w3-validation
but no one ever replied.



My solution for anyone interested is to go to plugins, filter by artio, disable them all, then edit, then re-enable. this is very slow and time consuming and end user site clients don't love it either.


I understand this is "community" support -- but it would seem like answering on obviously buggy issues would be good for all.

I have a small 3.1 site I am using sef4 on because it has some category blog layout urls and title bars I wanted to customize.

however, when I have the component disabled I get a congratulations - validated response from w3, but when I turn it on I get a broken doctype error.

I get this error from validator on the pages when joomesef is enabled:

with the opening < shown in red.

I also get other "warnings":


so it seems like something is going wrong on either the base href or doctype rendering.

The only difference I can see in the rendered source code is that there are two leading empty lines before the doctype tag and the addition of the base href tag in the artio version that are not in the non-artio.

I have tried the sef configuration Set page base href value as both " No - disable..." and "No - leave original" and yet in either case the base href tag is still generated.

my guess is it is either the blank lines at the beginning (www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/syntax.html#normal-doctype seems to indicate no spaces before declaration allowed) or it is not the actual base href tag that is the problem but something with the script that generates it prior to the doctype being set.

I tried commenting out the '$document->setBase' lines 803, 821 and 827 in plugins/system/joomsef/joomsef.php but it did not remove the base href.

is there a way to completely disable the base href tag generation and/or remove the leading blank lines from the re-write? if I knew where I could do that I could test which it is that is causing the problems.



also, since I am posting anyway, since sef4 I notice I have to disable the 5 artio plugins in admin or I cannot edit articles or modules because the urls are sef'd with a bunch of &amp; in the urls. i have used joomsef for a while and never had that problem until sef4 and now it happens no matter what server I am on so i don't think it is a server issue. but I just disable the plugins do what I have to do, then enable. however if this could be fixed it would be much better. is that something in the paid version maybe?