The article assumes that you already have a Joomla website setup and are familiar with how to install and configure extensions in Joomla.
sh404SEF is a must have component for any Joomla site, it is essential to create Search Engine Friendly urls which are very important for anyone wanting to get into Google,Yahoo or any of the other similar search engines.
Installation
Installation of this component is pretty straight forward, go to the install/uninstall page and install the sh404SEF package.Joomla native SEO Configuration
Before configuring sh404SEF, the native SEO settings of Joomla need to be turned on. You can do this in the Global Configurations page on the top right corner.
If you are using a .htaccess file, you can turn on the mod-rewrite option as well. The easiest way to use the .htaccess file is to rename the htaccess.txt file that is provided with the default Joomla installation.
Once you have the SEO settings turned on you can test your urls and see if they look better. Although the SEO feature in Joomla makes the urls pretty, it still lacks a long ways as to how the urls should look like for search engines to pick them up.
That’s where the url re-writing components come into picture. One such component is the sh404sef by siliana. It’s the component I use for all my clients and my sites as well and its worked pretty good so far. And the best part is it free!! It has a lot of configuration settings to customize how the urls come out and did I mention its free!
