All listings and articles in Joomla must have a parent menu item, otherwise their URLs have ugly "/component/content/article/" segment and it is not possible to assign modules to those pages.
Without a parent menu item, the listing URL will look similar to this:
example.com/component/content/article/49-category-name/subcategory-name/305-listing-title
JReviews uses Joomla's content system for listings and because of this the parent menu item of listings must be a Joomla Category Blog/List menu item. After you create those menu items, the "/component/content/article/" segment in URLs will be replaced with the titles of category menu items.
Starting with JReviews 2.4.10 version, those Joomla Category menu items can be used as the main navigation of your site if you enable the JReviews SEF Plugin. In this case, create Joomla Category menu items in the main menu of your site.
If you don't enable the JReviews SEF Plugin, you will need to create required Joomla category menu items in a "hidden" menu that isn't shown on your site and for the main menu of the site create separate JReviews Category List menu items.
Choosing a good menu item structure is important because the title aliases of those menu items will be used in URLs of listings. You have a choice:
The third option is recommended because then none of the category URLs will have ID numbers and urls will include the full category structure.
With this setup, you will have a "perfect" URL structure, for example:
example.com/category-name example.com/category-name/subcategory-name example.com/category-name/subcategory-name/listing-title
after the Hidden Menu is created, click New in the toolbar to create the first menu item.
next click the Select button and you will get this popup with the list of available menu item types, choose Category Blog or Category List (it is not important which one):
With this setup, the listing URLs will include the category names that you created in this Hidden Menu, for example:
example.com/category-name/ID-listing-title
The categories will have a separate URL structure based on how you create JReviews Category List menu items in the main menu of your site.
For users to be able to submit and access content, it is required to create some of the many menu items that JReviews provides.
To create a menu item, go to one of your Menus in the Joomla Menu Manager and click the New button:
On the next page, click the Select button to select the type of menu item:
A popup with all menu item types will appear:
Click on a link to create a specific type of a menu item. Each menu type is explained below.
Whenever you edit an existing JReviews menu item and adjust its parameters, you need to go to the JReviews administration and click the "Clear Cache & File Registry" link for the changes to be applied.
The Advanced Search menu item allows visitors to search listings based on multiple field values.
Example of the advanced search menu item can be found on the JReviews demo site http://demo.reviewsforjoomla.com/search.
The Advanced Search menu item has these parameters:
Listing Type - if you leave the listing type unselected, visitors will first need to select a listing type on the advanced search page before the search form will expand with all fields. If you select a specific listing type, the adv. search page will automatically expaned all custom fields available for that listing type.
Theme suffix - here you can choose a theme suffix for the search results page.
By default, all custom fields that are included in a specific listing type will appear on the advanced search page. If you want to hide specific fields from appearing on the search form, you can do it in the Fields Manager:
Important: it is required to have a least one advanced search menu item without a listing type selected for JReviews search functionality to work correctly. If you don't want to show the advanced search page on your site, you can create this menu item in a "Hidden Menu" that isn't displayed on the site.
Some types of JReviews pages don't require a regular JReviews menu item, which means it's not easy to controll their URL structure or to assign modules to them. To solve this problem, it is recommended to create Catch-all menu items that will automatically become the parent menu items of those pages.
The Catch-All options menu item has these parameters:
Type of Menu - there are 4 different options, which means you should create a separate menu item for each of them:
Media - parent menu item for all media detail pages and media upload page.
Listing Edit - parent menu item of all listing edit pages
Listing Comparison - parent menu item of all listing comparison pages
View All Reviews for Listing - parent menu item of all "View All Reviews" pages that are available on listing detail pages when the listing has a large number of reviews.
Everywhere Extension - this parameter is used only when "View All Reviews for Listing" type of menu is used. You can have a separate "View All Reviews" menu item for each Everywhere Extensions. For JReviews listings always use 'com_content'.
The Catch-All menus should not be visible anywhere on your site, you should create them in a "Hidden Menu".
List pages display a list of listings based on how you configure the menu parameters.
The List Pages menu item has these parameters:
Type of Menu - available options:
Directory - filters listings to the selected directory. This parameter is optional for all types of menus.
Category - filters listings to the selected category. This parameter is required for Category List type of menu and optional for others.
Page total - total number of listings that will be shown.
Limit per page - how many listings will be shown per page.
List layout - if you don't select a specific layout, the one selected in Global Configuration or Theme Manager will be used.
Theme Suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a different theme file to be used on this page. For example, enter '_compact' to load listings_blogview_compact.thtml theme file instead of the default listings_blogview.thtml file.
Custom WHERE for Custom List only - this parameter is used only if Custom List is selected as type of menu. Read about Custom WHERE and Custom ORDER BY.
Custom ORDER BY for Custom List only - this parameter is used only if Custom List is selected as type of menu. Read about Custom WHERE and Custom ORDER BY.
Page Description - custom description that will appear on top of the page.
The Comparison Page will display specific listings using the side-by-side layout where visitors can easily compare listing details.
The Comparison Page menu item has these parameters:
Listing IDs (comma list) - it is required to enter the IDs of listings that you want to show on this page. You can find out listing IDs on the JReviews Browse Listings page in administration or in Joomla Article Manager.
Theme suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
Page Description - custom description that will appear on top of the page.
The Directory page is used to display all categories that you use with JReviews. The advantage of the directory page over regular category pages is that the directory page can display all levels of categories. The directory page can't display listings.
Example of a directory page can be seen on the JReviews demo site: http://demo.reviewsforjoomla.com/business-directory.
The Directory menu item has these parameters:
Directory - if you leave this parameter unselected, the page will display all directories. If you select a specific directory, only that one will be displayed.
Theme suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
The directory menu item has additional Configuration Overrides parameters:
These parameters will override the settings from the global JReviews Configuration, Directory tab, but only if you set Enable Overrides to Yes.
Remember to click the "Clear Cache & File Registry" link in JReviews administration whenever you edit this menu item and adjust its parameters.
The Discussions page will display latest review comments if you enabled them in JReviews Configuration, Reviews tab.
The Discussions menu item has these parameters:
Limit per page - how many results will be shown per page.
Theme suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
The Media pages display media items (photos, videos, attachments, audio files) based on how you configure the menu parameters.
Example of a "Latest Media" page can be seen on the JReviews demo site http://demo.reviewsforjoomla.com/latest-media.
The Discussions menu item has these parameters:
Type of Menu - available options:
Order - choose how the media items will be ordered (Newest | Oldest | Most liked | Most viewed).
Show Order List - if set to Yes, users will be able to reorder media items.
Media Type - choose All to show all types of media or only a specific type.
Show Media Type Filter if set to Yes, users will be able to filter media items by type.
Extension - filter media items by component.
Description - custom description that will appear on top of the page.
Show Description - choose to show or hide the description.
Page total - total number of media items that will be shown.
Limit per page - how many media items will be shown per page.
Theme suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
The Submit New Listing menu item will display the listing submission form. Users will first need to select the category where they want to submit the listing and then the rest of the form will appear.
Only users that are allowed to submit listings based on the JReviews Access Settings will see the submit form.
The Submit New Listing menu item has these parameters:
Directory - if you select a directory, users will be able to submit listings only to categories that belong to that directory.
Category - if you select a category, users will be able to submit listing only to the selected category (and its subcategories if they exist).
Theme suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
The Reviewer Rank page displays the list of users based on the number of reviews they had written and the percentage of helpful reviews.
Example of a Reviewer Rank page can be seen on the JReviews demo site: http://demo.reviewsforjoomla.com/reviewers-rank.
The Reviewer Rank menu item has these parameters:
Limit per page - how many users will be shown per page.
Theme suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
The Reviews pages display a list of reviews based on how you configure the menu parameters.
Example of a "Latest Reviews" page can be seen on the JReviews demo site: http://demo.reviewsforjoomla.com/latest-reviews.
The Reviews Pages menu item has these parameters:
Type of Menu - available options:
Category - filters reviews to the selected category. This parameter is optional. If the Category is selected, you must enter the Extension name in the below parameter.
Extension - use to filter reviews by component (i.e. com_content, com_sobi2).
Page total - total number of reviews that will be shown.
Limit per page - how many reviews will be shown per page.
Theme Suffix - enter a theme suffix if you want a specific theme file to be used for this page.
Custom WHERE for Custom List only - this parameter is used only if Reviews - Custom List is selected as type of menu. Read about Custom WHERE and Custom ORDER BY.
Custom ORDER BY for Custom List only - this parameter is used only if Reviews - Custom List is selected as type of menu. Read about Custom WHERE and Custom ORDER BY.
Page Description - custom description that will appear on top of the page.
Due to the number of Search Engine Friendly (SEF) url solutions and the work required to support them we have decided to only officially support three of them: Core Joomla SEF, sh404sef and SEF Advance. If you decide to use a different solution we won't be able to provide support for it.
We recommend using Core Joomla SEF which we think provides very good results without adding too much overhead and have several articles below explaining what you need to do to make sure it works well with JReviews. Core Joomla SEF combined with JReviews SEF Plugin allows to have perfect category and listing URL structure without using any 3rd party SEF extensions.
To make the URLs look nicer, you should enable Joomla core SEF:
go to Joomla Global Configuration, and on first tab set Search Engine Friendly URLs and Use URL rewriting to Yes.
leave Add Suffix to URLs disabled.
Starting with JReviews 2.4.10 version, JReviews installation includes a SEF plugin which makes it possible to render Joomla category pages as JReviews category pages allowing you to simplify the menu and SEF URL structure and to improve the URLs of listings by removing the ID numbers from URLs.
Important:
the JReviews SEF plugin is not compatible with other 3rd party SEF extensions. You can't use it together with sh404sef, SEF Advance or any other SEF extension.
when using the SEF plugin with the article ID removal feature, you must not allow duplicate listing titles in the same category. Check your settings in the JReviews Configuration, Standard Fields tab. If you have listings with duplicate titles, then you need to change the title aliases so they can have different URLs.
The plugin is automatically installed, but it is left unpublished. After you read the instructions below, you can publish the plugin in the Joomla Plug-in Manager.
These are the plugin options:
Remove Article ID from URL - if enabled, URLs of listing detail pages will no longer have ID numbers and the SEF plugin will automatically 301 redirect old listing URLs with ID numbers to new URLs without ID numbers. This option should not be enabled if you allow submissions of listings with the same title in the same category.
Use core Category menus - if enabled, JReviews will render Joomla category menu items as JReviews category pages which means it is no longer required to create a separate JReviews Category List menu items. If you already have JReviews Category List menu items, they will be redirected to Joomla Category menu items when this setting is enabled.
Use JReviews Category Menu ID - if your site already has JReviews category menus which are visible to site visitors, enabling this will allow those menus to appear as active menus when clicked.
Replacement for URLs without Itemid - all JReviews pages without an Itemid (parent menu item) will use this string in URL instead of the default /component/jreviews/ segment.
New listing submission segment - appended to category URLs for new listing submissions.
View all reviews segment - appended to view all reviews URL when not using a catch-all menu item.
View all photos segment - appended to view all photos URL when not using a catch-all menu item.
View all videos segment - appended to view all videos URL when not using a catch-all menu item.
Search results segment - appended to search URL.
For new sites
Create only Joomla Category List or Category Blog menu items. Either for all categories, or only for top level or last level categories. It is recommended to create them for all categories so that none of the category urls have ID numbers.
Those Joomla Category menu items are supposed to be used as the main navigation of the site and they will be rendered as JReviews category pages. It is not necessary to create separate JReviews Category List menu items.
The URLs of categories will follow the menu item structure. For example, if you created a category menu item as first level menu item, it will look like this:
example.com/category-menu-alias
For subcategories, it is recommended to create menu items as a child of the parent category menu item, then the URL will look like this:
example.com/category-menu-alias/subcategory-menu-alias
The URLs of listings will look like this:
example.com/category-menu-alias/subcategory-menu-alias/listing-title-alias
If you want to include a directory name in the URL structure, create a JReviews Directory menu item and make it a parent of Joomla category menu items, then the URL will look like this:
example.com/directory-menu-alias/category-menu-alias/subcategory-menu-alias/listing-title-alias
If you have a lot of subcategories and don't want to create menu items for all of them, you can create menu items only for top level categories and then the URLs will contain subcategory names with ID numbers, for example:
example.com/category-menu-alias/ID-subcategory-name/listing-title-alias
For old sites that already have urls indexed by search engines
Before JReviews SEF plugin existed, it was required to create Joomla category menu items in a "hidden" menu. Those menu items are still required, but with the JReviews SEF plugin the URL structure generated by these Joomla menu items can be used for JReviews Category pages when Use core Category menus is enabled in SEF Plugin parameters.
Basically, you don't need to make any changes to your existing menu item setup, JReviews SEF plugin will automatically apply Joomla category URL structure to JReviews category pages and setup 301 redirects.
Important: You should not delete or rename your existing Joomla category menu items because that will change the URLs of listings and the SEF plugin will not be able to redirect old listing URLs to new ones. If you decide to change your menu item structure, you will need to manually setup 301 redirects from old urls to new ones via the htaccess file.
Important: This feature doesn't work if you use Advanced Module Manager. However, this extension provides similar features.
Now that Joomla category menu items are used as parent menu items for both category pages and listing detail pages, any module that you assign to the category menu items will be outputted on both category pages and listing detail pages.
To allow you to hide a specific module in category pages or listing detail pages, JReviews SEF Plugin adds a setting for this to every module in the Module Manager: