[Solved] Tips for auto creation of simple CB and GroupJive SEF URLs

Hi,

After extensive searching on this forum and the internet, I don't understand why I still can't get an answer about how to create good SEF URLs for the JoomlaPolis products. A wish that sounds so obvious to me

I want automatically created simple and understandable SEF URLs for my website visitors.

For CommunityBuilder users, something like:

--> mydomain.com/[First Name-Last Name] or better mydomain.com/users/[First Name-Last Name]

For GroupJive groups, something like:

--> mydomain.com/groups/[Group Name]

N.B.: Maybe with an "-[user-id/group-id]" at the end to avoid issues with duplicate names. And then create an option (like Facebook/LinkedIn etc.) for users to create their own unique last part of those URL's (if not already exist) on profile edit. Something like the LinkedIn option "Edit your custom URL - Personalize the URL for your profile - linkedin.com/in/{*****}".

Until now, we used sh404sef (extension) for this. For CB, it automatically created SEFs like mydomain.com/[Firstname-Lastname], but for GJ we have to manually create a SEF URL after each new group creation. We lived with the manual work (GJ) inconvenience, but now it turns out that sh404sef doesn't go to Joomla 4. While the alternative (4SEF) doesn't automatically generate SEF URLs even for CB (yet).

How or with which extension can I automatically generate CB and GJ SEF URLs like above? Also for security reasons I think you'd rather not show things like used software components (comprofiler/cbgroupjive), variables, IDs and other technical info in the URL.

Any suggestion or (extension) tips to auto create these CB and GJ URLs are more than welcome,

Noa

GJ links should already be SEF with the following structure.

/menu_alias/cateogry_id-category_name/group_id-group_name

These are perfectly valid and high ranking SEF URLs so I don't understand the problem here. Category name and group name are not unique so they must have their id prefixed or the URL won't be able to find the group. Below is an example from our demo site (it's 2 menus deep which is why it also has /community).

/community/groups/1-community-builder-add-ons/5-cb-activity

Profiles SEO is based off username. This cannot be changed at this time without modifying core code. It uses the below structure.

/menu_alias/user_id-username

Example as follows from our demo site.

/profiles/susan

For profile links we will omit the user_id if the username is already a valid SEF alias (as the result of running through Joomla's own aliasing function) otherwise we again have to prefix the user_id so we can find the user.

Your users can personalize their own profile URLs using the Profile URL (alias) field or you can generate them automatically using a field action in CB Auto Actions.

Thanks!

About CB SEF URL's.
Profile URL/alias rocks! Our previous Joomla administrator used sh404sef unnecessarily for 15 years to get that CB SEF URL result

About GJ:
1. Can we get rid of the /cateogry_id-category_name/ part in the URL as the group_id-group_name is always unique because of the id? Knowing that all my groups are in only 1 category. I prefer:

/menu_alias/group_id-group_name

2. If your answer on question 1 is no, can we at least remove -category_name so we get a shorter SEF URL like

/menu_alias/cateogry_id/group_id-group_name

3. Is there also a unique Group URL/alias field/function possible for GJ (like CB Profile URL)?

1. Can we get rid of the /cateogry_id-category_name/ part in the URL as the group_id-group_name is always unique because of the id? Knowing that all my groups are in only 1 category. I prefer:

No. Just because they're unique on your site doesn't mean they will be tomorrow. Unique group name is not enforced in code. Why do you want to remove this? It has no impact negative or positive on SEO. You would be removing it entirely for cosmetic purposes.

2. If your answer on question 1 is no, can we at least remove -category_name so we get a shorter SEF URL like

Yes, don't use categories and it won't be prefixed with the category path otherwise no. You can however, manually, construct URLs without it and it will still find the group but that's a fallback behavior and don't recommend doing that.

3. Is there also a unique Group URL/alias field/function possible for GJ (like CB Profile URL)?

The only way to have custom per-group URLs is to manually create a Joomla menu item to each group. Beyond that no there are no plans for an group URL field like for profiles.


Folks please don't go overblown on SEO. URL structure largely is irrelevant now for rankings and searches. Additionally statistically nobody manually types in URLs anymore outside of domain name which browser history and bookmarking have also made largely irrelevant. It's more important that you add proper metadata to your pages. Especially JSON-LD structured data which makes all previous SEO irrelevant.