Some components such as AceSEF are free, but they will display a link to the website of the developer on every page of your site.. To change the title setting for all articles that you w
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5. Rename htaccess.txt to htaccess—yes, this file name should start with a dot and should not have a file extension (such as txt)!
6. Click on Save and click on Preview Browse your site and you should now experience
the magic Your URLs are short and descriptive, like this:
http://www.srup.net/ugly-paintings.html
What just happened?
You've just fooled search engines into believing you're using good old HTML web pages Joomla! now displays URLs that seem to point to pages, such as http://www.srup.net/ ugly-paintings.html Using SEF URLs will make it easier for visitors and search engines
to understand the contents of the page this URL is pointing to
As you've seen, Joomla!'s pretty URLs come in three flavors:
By setting Search Engine Friendly URLs to Yes, you'll get short and readable URLs,
but they do all contain the index.php filename
By setting Use Apache mod_rewrite to Yes, you'll tell Joomla! to make the URLs
even prettier They no longer contain index.php Your hosting provider has to support this feature (called mod_rewrite); they should have the mod_rewrite
module installed on the web server This technique involves using an htaccess
file containing rules telling the web server how to deal with these pretty URLs
By setting Add suffix to URLs, the html suffix is added to URLs This is recommended
because this makes the Joomla! output look like pages in static sites Search engines tend to prefer static pages to dynamic output, which is likely to change all the time
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Trang 2that the URLs can still contain some numbers (these are Joomla!'s internal references to specific database content):
http://www.srup.net/ugly-paintings/39-facts/82-ugly-paintings-gallery.html
If you want even prettier URLs, consider using a dedicated SEF Component for Joomla! These usually give you more control, allowing you to modify individual URLs or shorten URLs by hiding the section or category part There are some fine SEF components available
in the Joomla! Extensions Directory; check out the details and user comments to find out which one fits your needs All the big ones work great It's just a question of installing the component, checking the basic settings, and enjoying the output
Why don't you check out one of the available SEF components for your own site? Go to
www.joomace.net/free-downloads to download the com_acesef.zip file After
installing, you'll find an AceSEF section in the Components menu giving access to a special
Control Panel:
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Enabling AceSEF is just a question of clicking the Configuration icon and selecting Enable
AceSEF: Yes After you've committed your choice (click on Save), you're all set Check the
frontend of your site to see the pretty URLs magic at work Explore the various AceSEF menus and the User Manual to tweak your site links to your heart's content
SEF comes at a cost
At the time of writing there are no free, no-strings-attached SEF components
for Joomla! Some components (such as AceSEF) are free, but they will display a link to the website of the developer on every page of your site If you don't want this, you'll have to buy the extension—or just use the default Joomla! SEF
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Trang 4to link back to your site Not only will this help you build your reputation on the subject, it should also generate some valuable inbound links
However, not only links to and from your site can influence your ranking It's also worth
adding internal links (that is links within your site) By adding these, you'll make it easier for
both visitors and search engines to find your content You can manually create links in your articles, but Joomla! also allows you to automatically create internal hyperlinks It allows you to set all article titles to be hyperlinks to the main article text and it enables you to dynamically create lists of hyperlinks
Time for action – turn article titles into hyperlinks
By default, the titles of articles displayed with intro texts (on the home page, or on overview pages) are plain text The visitor can only go through to the full articles by clicking the
ac-companying Read more… link From a SEO point of view, it's better to turn the article titles
into hyperlinks to the full articles Let's turn this feature on:
1. To change the title setting for all articles that you want to write from now on,
navigate to Content | Article Manager and click on Parameters to open the
general settings screen for articles Set Title Linkable: to Yes as shown in the
following screenshot:
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2. This setting won't change any article that has already been stored in Joomla!'s database To change the setting for an individual (existing) article, navigate
to Content | Article Manager and select the article you want to edit.
3. In the article editor change the Title Linkable setting in the Parameters
(Advanced) to Yes:
What just happened?
The site visitor now can click on the article title instead of just the Read more… link to go to
the full article Here's an example of this on the example website After you've changed the
Title Linkable setting, article headings are clickable:
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Trang 6Time for action – add a list of links to popular articles
Let's add a list of links to popular articles on the example site:
1 Navigate to Extensions | Module Manager Click on New.
2 Select the Most Read Content module and click on Next.
3. In the Module: [Edit] screen, enter the details for this module In the
Title field enter Popular Articles.
4. In the Position field select right to show this module in the right-hand side column.
5. Leave the other settings as they are By default, the Menu Assignment settings will make the module display on all pages The Parameters are set to show
a list of 5 hyperlinks
6. Click on Save and click on Preview to see the output on the frontend of the site:
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What just happened?
You've added the Most Read Content module to your site to display a list of popular articles These are the articles that have the highest number of page views Having lists like this
on your site is again good for both your real visitors (who'll be able to find out what other visitors like to read) and for your robot visitors who appreciate regularly updated links to different articles within the site
Have a go hero – add link lists
Have a look at the other link list modules that Joomla! contains, such as the Latest News module (displaying recently added articles, see Chapter 10) and the Related Articles module, showing a list of articles related to the current article the visitor sees Articles are considered
to be related if they share at least one keyword in the article's Metadata Information If
you've got lots of content on your site, it's a good idea to offer visitors several ways to find popular, related, or recently added articles
Using a site map
A site map is a one-page overview of your site's contents containing links to all pages Adding
a site map will automatically create internal links to all pages, and both real people and search engine robots will benefit from it as it presents a clear overview of the site's contents The site map functionality isn't part of the Joomla! core software, but there are a number of free site map extensions available for Joomla! 1.5
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Trang 8To get the site map to display, add a menu link from your home page to the site map:
4. Navigate to Menus | Main Menu and click on New to add a menu item.
5. In the Select Menu Item Type list, select SEF Service Map You'll be taken to the Menu Item: [New] page.
6. In the Title field, enter a title In this example, we've entered Site Map Click on
Save and click on Preview In the frontend Main Menu, click on the Site
Map link to see the results:
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What just happened?
By adding a site map you've created an overview of links to all pages and made it easier to find content
Have a go hero – tweak that site map
If you want to change the output of the site map, navigate to Components | SEF Servicemap.
Here you can edit the site map structure; maybe you want to leave out some (categories of) articles SEF Service Map offers a wide range of settings allowing you to change the appearance
of the site map, display it in one or more columns, and so on
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Trang 10Let's enable RSS feeds on the example site.
1. Navigate to Extensions | Module Manager and select the module named
Syndication (the module type is mod_syndicate).
2. You'll be taken to the Module: [Edit] screen Set Enabled to Yes.
3. In the Position drop-down box, select footer This is the position where the
hyperlink to the RSS feed will be displayed
4. In the Menu Assignment section choose Select Menu Item(s) from the List and select just the Home page menu item This way visitors can subscribe to news
items that are added to the home page: