Using sh404SEF with JReviews

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sh404SEF extension is not required for SEF URLs of JReviews pages; we recommend using Joomla Core SEF instead. If you already use sh404SEF on your site, follow the steps below to configure it correctly.


  1. Enable Joomla Core SEF URLs. Read: Using Joomla Core SEF <= Make sure to read this linked page and follow the instructions there. Simply enabling core SEF is not enough.
  2. Enable sh404sef
  3. In the sh404sef control panel go to "SEO Configuration" and set "Activate SEO management" to NO
  4. Make sure in the sh404sef configuration, "By Components" tab, you have the "use sh404sef plugin if available" option selected for JReviews. For older versions of sh404sef the option is "override sef_ext file".
  5. In the sh404sef configuration, Advanced tab, change the "rewriting mode" to "with .htaccess (mod_rewrite)". You need to be running sh404sef in extended mode in order to see the Advanced tab.
  6. Make sure ALL your JReviews menus are set to public access. Otherwise Joomla will find the menus with the maximum access when an Itemid is not specified and it will result in a non-authorized access message. This will prevent many links in JReviews from working and it will also break the ajax functionality. If you want to hide a menu link, you need to set the module for the menu to registered/special access, not the menu link itself. To control access to JReviews actions you should use the Access Settings menu in JReviews.
  7. None of your menus should have a "reviews" alias, or you can end up with 404 error pages or listing URLs always taking you back to the section/category list page. The JReviews plugin for sh404sef prepends a segment to the JReviews URLs so all URLs start with /reviews. If you want to change the /reviews segment to something else, you can edit the com_jreviews.php plugin in /components/com_jreviews/sef_ext folder. Find the code below and change the 'reviews' string to something else.
$default_no_itemid_segment = 'reviews';

IMPORTANT: if you want to use the SEO Manager features of JReviews for listing types, you need to disable the active management of meta tags by sh404sef. To do this go to sh404sef Configuration=> SEO Configuration => Activate SEO management = [No]