Recently I ran into and issue implementing SEF (Search Engine Friendly) urls on the for a Joomla website hosted on IIS. Specifically, I wanted to disable the SEF modifications made by Joomla for the search component in the site. When the Joomla property for SEF urls is turned on, it will automatically convert all hyperlinks on the page into server friendly urls. However since the Joomla feature in IIS requires a filter to be placed on the site in order to decipher the url, it can cause problems when the links are dynamically created, and can cause the links to be undecipherable by the filter. This problem occured in the search component, where the search results contain hyperlinks that are dynamically created. Therefore it was required that the search engine friendly names conversion in Joomla be turned off for the search component. In order to do this I was forced a custom code change in the Joomla site, by tracking down where the SEF urls are created and disabling it for the search component. The following steps we executed on Joomla 1.5, using the built in component for SEF conversion in Joomla if you are using a newer version, a different component for SEF conversion, or your site is not hosted on IIS these changes may not apply.
Archive for July, 2009
Disabling SEF Urls for the Joomla Search Component
Monday, July 27th, 2009Why Benefical Development Tools Are Neglected
Monday, July 20th, 2009A question was posed to me as to why so many developers neglected to use beneficial tools which help in data modeling, performance testing, stress testing, and security testing during the development cycle. I believe this is a result of several factors. First, developers and customers miscalculate the cost to benefit ratio. Performing data modeling, performance, stress, and security testing comes down to one question. What benefit does the application gain from the time and money investment? A majority of projects start small, and they do not take into account the possible growth and ultimate usage. Many customers are interested in two things a quick turn around and that their requirements at the time were met, but the problem is requirements constantly change and expand, which then exacerbates the shortsightedness in design and testing. With requirements contanstly changing it makes it hard to judge what benefit a tool might have towards your application. In conjunction with this it can be very hard to determine the cost of learning a new tool. With the cost of the tool being unknown and the benefit often underestimated, this will often result in it not being used.
Corporate Technology Solutions, Inc.