Let's look at the options we have if we are looking for an SEF component? Well, luckily we have an array of options to choose from and we will look at the most well known ones.
- Artio JoomSEF 3: This is a semi-commercial SEF component, which means you can download and use it for free. But there is a little catch in the free version—in the metadata of all the generated pages there is an advertisement. This advertisement is probably not related to the content of your site and can harm your SEO efforts while you are linking to non-related sites. With the commercial option these links are taken out, it costs 24.99 Euro.
- SEF Advance: This is one of the oldest components. It is a commercial component that will cost you 40 Euro. It is indeed a very stable version and it is well supported. However, it needs Ion Cube Loader (ICL) to be installed on your site; this is clearly mentioned in the documentation. The Ion Cube Loader is a PHP based software that needs to be installed to decrypt the SEF Advance software to make it work. Not all hosting providers will allow such software to be installed as it eats up a lot of CPU power to decrypt software. Ion Cube is used by the developer to protect his/her software code. What I don't like about this component is that you need an extra license if you want to create a subdomain such as
blog.example.com, or if you want to install WordPress on that subdomain. - sh404SEF: This is a free SEF component that is well maintained and has some extra options such as built-in native support for Virtuemart. It has a lot of configuration options that we will be looking at in this chapter, as this is my and the Joomla! editors' choice for SEF URLs. The Joomla! editors are the webmasters who maintain the Extensions Directory and they keep track of third-party extensions and reviews placed in that directory. The Joomla! editors also have a short list of featured components, which are the current best components for a certain task. You can find this list at http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/featured.
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