I have K2 with Advanced SEF Settings ON, in there, I have set the "Item ID and title alias separator" to "Use a forward slash (/)" however with sh404sef plugin also switched ON, with the K2 sh404SEF Integration settings, I can't get the following:

www.website.com/category/993/articlename

instead, even after purging URL manager, I still get the following, which I don't want:

www.website.com/category/993-articlename

Is it possible to get the first option with the forward slash for the ID rather than the dash? what settings will achieve this?

Could this be a Cache setting?

thanks,

Hi,

"Item ID and title alias separator" & "Use a forward slash (/)" works.
My Setting: imgur.com/ZUWvw6w

Regards

Thanks,

I have had a look at your screen shot, and I also have the same settings in my K2 Advanced Parameters.

But I still see website.com/category/234-articletitle

rather than :

website.com/category/234/articletitle

I have got the default sh404SEF, settings, ie, Enable URL optimization on with .htaccess file, see screen shot:

imgur.com/m6Bpyw9

What am I missing?

Hi,

i don't use sh404SEF and didn't change .htaccess so i can't tell you, what you are missing. In my Opinion its not about k2.

Regards

Yes, with just K2 advanced settings it works perfectly, and I can see the article id separated with a / rather than a -

I was looking at combining K2 with Sh404se plugin to access the extra features of Sh404se, but don't want to loose SEO and readability if the URLs change due to a slash rather than a forward slash.

Hi,

have you searched in Forum about this Issue? There are tons of Threads about this, maybe something what can help you.

One Question: Whats the Extra-Feature of sh404se, thats benefits your Problems?

Regards

I've had a look through the forum but I'll take another look.

Basically I have bought the sh404se plugin so I wanted to get it to work, it also had a useful built in G Analytics feature.

Although K2 with a canonical plugin works well without , which is my current set-up on the live site.

Hi Daniel,

Personally, I recommend using the dash over the slash. By using the item ID as a directory, you are creating a false hierarchical structure. Meaning, when you remove the alias from the URL, you left with a directory that does not exist. This may be the case for other CMS tools such as WordPress that is build to be a date-based blogging tool, but not yours.

Take for example this URL:

mashable.com/2015/04/03/kinect-for-windows-adaptor/

If you remove the alias, you are left with a functioning page (in this case archive):

mashable.com/2015/04/03/

Plus, by placing the ID in the alias, you are following the typical Joomla page structure. Which would be ideal if you choose to mix content sources in the future (Joomla core, Kunena, etc.) For the all of URLs would be consistent.

Lastly, I would like to offer the thought of not using the ID at all, which is what I prefer. This would allow for a cleaner URL structure, that is easy to communicate and remember.

You tell me which is better:

domain.com/contact

or

domain.com/17-contact

or

domain.com/17/contact

As or SEO, I found that short & keyword targeted URLs provide optimal SEO. Experts suggest Google provides particular importance on the first few keywords in the alias.

I hope this helps,

Joe Campbell

Thanks Joseph for your feedback and thoughts on this.

I can see that the dash would be better because its the standard way that Joomla constructs the URL, as well as making it future proof for other plugins and systems that also use the same url construction too

And I can see that removing the article ID altogether would be best from a human readability perspective, however, my client will be creating many articles per week, using Joomla as a magazine style system, therefore I chose to add the article id, particularly because of this article in K2:

getk2.org/blog/1159-k2-v264-release-introduces-new-cool-sef-url-options

It says that without the ID, K2 has to initiate another database query and that Google prefers the slash rather than the dash

In regards to the false folder structure, I have also installed canonical-links-for-k2 plugin which redirects the page to the article, just with the ID and without the title alias. This has solved many duplication issues I was having too.

Anyway, its a moot point now as the site has gone live and unless I want to do some tedious re-mapping via 301 redirects, there is no going back now!

However, I shall certainly advise my client about "short & keyword targeted URLs provide optimal SEO."

The more I do websites, its clear that there is never one correct way of doing it, you just have to make a decision and then create work-arounds and fixes as you go along.

Cheers,