Critical Bug: SEF urls in Joomla 3.2 not working reliably for Cobalt Category Menu items

After 12 hours of trying to work out what is going on, (and Sergey being very helpful), I have a clearer understanding of the issues, but no resolution.

1. The : character used in Cobalt8 Category/Section URL's is now unable to be used since Joomla 3.2 and stops Joomla creating a new menu, or editing/saving an older menu item

Sergey wrote a temp patch for it that allows other characters to be used and I am testing that now.

2. When one of these bad SEF URL's is viewed, the Menu Highlight fails, and HOME is selected, even when the page is a subcategory under a Main Menu Item

3. The immediate problem is that Cobalt/joomla router does not translate Cobalt Category List External Url's correctly when SEF is turned on.

We have a site with 30 Menu items. 4 of these are Category lists, the rest Individual Records pages.

The category Lists are created as an External URL menu item, (as there is no category Listing menu item in Cobalt), we paste in the non-SEF url for each category.

The non-SEF URL is gathered from a temporary Section Records Listing menu item, where the record Category URL is shown for each article.

The external link is entered in the Menu item as:

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records&section_id=2~blog&cat_id=24~blog-me&Itemid=251

..(i am using ~ instead of : )

and Cobalt/Joomla converts it to SEF as :

/component/cobalt/category-items/1-content/23-our-people?Itemid=169

When it should be:

/websitestuff/category-items/1-content/23-our-people

a) Sef is not applying the Section name "websitestuff" (as the Section name normally replaces the /component/cobalt/ part

b) The ?Itemid=xxx on the end, usually means the format of the origonal non-SEF URL does not meet the requirements of the Cobalt/Joomla router.

Even more bizzare however, is when we make a Menu ALIAS of these mis-formatted links, we get a SEF link such as

/?Itemid=169

and this DOES work correctly, except it will create a duplicate content penalty in Google.

This issue is repeated across all 3 of our Joomla 3.2 sites with the latest Cobalt on. It was not an issue in previous 3.1.5 sites, with previous versions of Cobalt on. (we have an older Cobalt site running v8.326 and it works fine)

We don't know if this is a Joomla 3.2 or a Cobalt8 recent version issue or a combination of the two.

There are articles pointing to issues with Joomla menus dropping off the Itemid and fixes for that, but they use the com_content, com_contact etc routers, not Sergeys Joomla router.

@xmanflash**** @Sergey

Thanks for your comprehensive post and explanations. I feel your pain.

Sorry, i can´t judge or help here at the moment, because ALL my J3+ / C8 installations are local tests. Fortunately, I am too wary to use both for a real production and live project! Thus, I never tested SEF/SEO features at all... i also don´t understand this "colon/delimiter" in the URLs. I remember, it was invented for better performance?! Anyway, all this special things seem to lead to issues... I thought Cobalt is going to make use of all J!3 features, benefits and methods?! At least this was a reason to create a C8 for J!3 only and leave C7 behind... (as far as I understood Sergey's).

Except for the missing and really annoying "Category Menu Item", which HAS to be changed by all means!!!

@Sergey

Is this a reproducable issue in all J3.2/C8 installs? If yes, does everything have to be rethought and refactored now!?

I understand what Sergey is doing, and it seems to be supported in the Joomla Documentation..

The main issue here is that Joomla 3.2 will not allow an External URL Menu item to contain colons ( : ) any more - and we are forced to use them in Category Links within Cobalt..

I think Sergey can code anything, I just think he is not sure what the best way of dealing with the Category URL's is, or that they are important. Which is where I think permalinks come in. Category list menu Items need to have a permalink. Or at least the option to force a permalink.

Basically a router is pretty simple - on Render, it converts the non-SEF URL into a string with an expected format, and on 'click' it chops up the SEF url and reconstructs the non-SEF URL and then passes back to Joomla to load the page.

It is now doing this wrongly for some weird reason in Categories. We have one site that has 20 Categories, and we need it to stay that way as we are doing a lot of 'filtering across categories' - one of Cobalts main strengths.

The customer wants to use vanity URL's (pretty ones) and we are getting a lot of heat about this issue.

All teh URL's have /component/cobalt/ and ?Itemid=111 in them and now since 3.2 the menus do not stick. Its now at the point where I cannot use Cobalt for any future projects until this is fixed, and may have to completely rebuild the 3 current websites with some other system urgently, after months of development.

This describes SEF urls - and uses colons in the URL

http://docs.joomla.org/Search_Engine_Friendly_URLs#tab=FAQs

(I added this link previous, but the URL tag used here appears to have stopped working and shows a blank line instead..)

We are going live with a site today so cannot spend any more time on the SEF thing other than to say that Sergeys 'permalink' solution seems to help quite a bit.

http://www.mintjoomla.com/community/knowledge/user-item/43-sergey/245-create-joomla-menu-links-to-categories-or-itemid-understood.html

I think the combination of : errors, SEF url's changing and External Links have combined to cloud the real issues.

I will keep on working on this to clarify exactly how to deal with menu items and structures and categories, as we have another site due mid jan that HAS to have menu items work properly.

Happy Christmas everybody.

Pete

Peter, unfortunately I do not know a good resolution for your problem until all sections are simply categories of single section. I do not even what even to suggest. I can only suggest to normalize your site and create section per category of 1 level. And create menu element to each section and set it in section and type parameters.

Hi Sergey.. I am having some success with the Category Menu-Item-ID selection process, but I have an update on the Router.

Since Joomla 3.2.1, we have 2 problems with Cobalt and SEF.

1. Menus are now acting this way.

Enter External URL (for a Cobalt Section > Category list):

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records&section_id=1&cat_id=14&Itemid=170

The Joomla Menu module renders this link as:

component/cobalt/category-items/1-content/14-mazda-news?Itemid=170

but when I click the menu item and go to that page, the URL at the top of the page shows:

about/category-items/1-content/14-mazda-news

!!!!

2. Rendering Items used to work fine, but now when we add an item to module, the SEF URL comes back as:

/request-a-brochure/item/42

Instead of:

/request-a-brochure (which also works)

Something is adding "item/42/" to the end of the URL and this will cause duplicate page penalties. I believe this is something that needs to be fixed in the Cobalt8 Router, but could be wrong.

Sergey, when you get a moment i can show you this happening on our Dev site.

I saw in a previous ticket, another Cobalt user had purchased MijoSef due to URL issues. As I am desperate to get this working (We go live today) I have done the same, and now the URLS are all working fine.

MijoSef costs up to 59 USD and the Cobalt plugin $9.

I am temporarily relieved, for this simple site. But the fact Cobalt is not creating valid URL's for categories is a real issue. I had to pay a lot more money to get this working, and if MijoSef can get it right, then Cobalt can.

Hello Peter. I apologize I could not answer on weekends. We were installing floor film heating system in our Office.

MijoSef slows down sites with a lot of content.

That is true. Any 3DP SEF extension will slow down. That is why we use our system. We could develop absolutely the same router as mijoSef but performance is one of our greatest concerns. So we cannot sacrifice speed to URL beauty.

I am very sorry if you have purchased mijoSef under the pressure of feeling desperate. I would suggest just to create your own router file and customize it.

Cobalt URL concept is very simple. There are only 2 Cobalt links. List of articles and full article. Concept is very simple. There should be dedicated itemid for List and article or dedicated Itemid for list and dedicated itemid for article.

Hi Sergey, no problem, I am actually trying to get a bug fixed in Cobalt router, not write a new one!

I am setting up a test site show I can explain to you better.

The system must support SEF urls for multiple categories, without using External URL's otherwise there is no point in having multiple categories in Cobalt in a modern website.

An update.

MijoSef is so slow (even in a simple 20 page ) site that I cannot use it. It doubles/triples the page load time, I don't understand why and maybe its a setup issue.

I have discovered why some Cobalt Category External URLs are not routed properly when SEF is on:

using the External URL:

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records&section_id=1&cat_id=14&Itemid=170

We end up with the SEF URL

/component/cobalt/category-items/1-content/23-our-people?Itemid=170

When it should be:

**/websitestuff/category-items/1-content/23-our-people **

The problem is due to the Itemid=170.

The Joomla menu is setup thus:

Main Menu > About (Itemid 115) > Our People (Itemid 170)

Main Menu > About (Itemid 115) > News (Itemid 171)

Main Menu > About (Itemid 115) > Testimonials (Itemid 172)

... etc

'About' is a single record

'Our People', 'News' and 'Testimonials' are Cobalt Records lists.

When we replace the records Menu Item ID - 170 with its parent - 115, the SEF URL is created correctly.

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records&section_id=1&cat_id=14&Itemid=170

Becomes:

/websitestuff/category-items/1-content/23-our-people

Sergey -

Can you please confirm this is how we are supposed to enter External URL's? - I thought we needed to enter the 'Our People' menu item, not its parent?

And if we should enter the parent, how will we ever get 'our-people' Menu Items to highlight ?

Are there any more comprehesive instructions for this? This page does not cover it.

http://www.mintjoomla.com/community/knowledge/user-item/43-sergey/245-create-joomla-menu-links-to-categories-or-itemid-understood.html

And there is even a question on that page that even has the same menu highlighting issue I have experienced in Joomla 3.2+ that is unanswered.

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records§ion_id=1&cat_id=14&Itemid=170

is inserted as external URL. Thus Itemid is not processed even though there is such a parameter.

And yet,

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records&section_id=1&cat_id=14&Itemid=170

Gives me a SEF menu link of:

/component/cobalt/category-items/1-content/23-our-people?Itemid=170

But

index.php?option=com_cobalt&view=records&section_id=1&cat_id=14&Itemid=115

Gives me a SEF menu link of:

/websitestuff/category-items/1-content/23-our-people

The only difference is the Itemid - So I need to ask - if it is not processed, how is the Itemid affecting the Menu link result ?

I am suspicious that there has been a change to the way Joomla handles External URL's in Joomla 3.2+ that breaks menu highlights.

Well - as there is no assistance with my problem, I bit the bullet and and wrote a Cobalt category Menu Item, and have one of my (simpler) websites working perfectly now.

Menu links for categories are SEF formatted correctly as /about/news and the menu highlights work in Joomla 3.2.1.

However, this does not work on a site with more category depths. I am looking into this now.

OK - I have the code working now for both sites. I have added an entry for people to contact me if they have this problem so I can help here I am using Joomla 3.2.1 and Cobalt 8.457 on both sites.

Progress report:

I now have SEF urls working to almost my satisfaction.

With my new Category Menu item, and a slightly modified Cobalt router, I have gone from:

Category-List URL's like:

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/category-items/1-content/3-guidelines-and-best-practice

are now displayed as

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/

Single Item (Record) page URL's like:

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/item/3-guidelines-and-best-practice/1513-mobile-discrepancies-2013

are now displayed as

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/item/1513-mobile-discrepancies-2013

The new item link is basically:

'/Category menu1/Category menu 2/etc' alias heirarchy

"/item" (I have no idea where this comes frmo and decided to leave it there for now)

'/recid-article_name'

I am pretty happy with this now. The only caveat is that I do need to create a menu for each category/section, whether visible or hidden. Which is a small price to pay. Most of our sites don't have more than 10-15 categories.

In summary, and in keeping with the spirit of Cobalt, there are no extra database calls, and slightly less code executed in the router :)

Sounds good. I am happy that you have managed it to work as you expect.

I think the authors of Cobalt should provide a db lookup, and possibly my solution as optional routers, and let customers decide on speed issues for themselves, instead of forcing people to use an inelegant and difficult External Link process that only is realy beneficial in large sites for speed concerns.

Agree. Since the Router is a config parameter and made for customizations, i would like to have alternative settings and simple SEF-links.

I understand the reasons and tricks to speed things up, but as you mentioned already: Not everyone might need or recognize those optimizations.

peter.needham Progress report:

I now have SEF urls working to almost my satisfaction.

With my new Category Menu item, and a slightly modified Cobalt router, I have gone from:

Category-List URL's like:

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/category-items/1-content/3-guidelines-and-best-practice

are now displayed as

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/

Single Item (Record) page URL's like:

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/item/3-guidelines-and-best-practice/1513-mobile-discrepancies-2013

are now displayed as

/guidelines-and-best-practice/guidelines/item/1513-mobile-discrepancies-2013

The new item link is basically:

---

'/Category menu1/Category menu 2/etc' alias heirarchy

"/item" (I have no idea where this comes frmo and decided to leave it there for now)

'/recid-article_name'

I am pretty happy with this now. The only caveat is that I do need to create a menu for each category/section, whether visible or hidden. Which is a small price to pay. Most of our sites don't have more than 10-15 categories.

In summary, and in keeping with the spirit of Cobalt, there are no extra database calls, and slightly less code executed in the router :)

Hello. I have the same problem with the URL. Could you help with solving this problem?

write me zhigalov86 @ gmail.com

Sorry to bump in, but for whoever really wants "pretty" URL's - can't you simply REDIRECT?

Either original Joomla com_redirect, or more flexible ones, like ReDJ (?)

Just saying...