We had a curious case last week. A client called us and told us that his website’s K2 RSS feed was not working. He was using FeedBurner, and he told us that it (FeedBurner) was displaying content that was weeks old instead of displaying the fresh content from his website.
So, we checked the website link that FeedBurner was using to retrieve the feed and we noticed that it was redirecting to the corresponding page on the Joomla website, instead of the RSS page. That was odd, and we have never seen this before.
Now, what was special about this website is that it was using sh404SEF, which is an extension that is known to cause many issues. So, we looked up the non-SEF link of the feed in sh404SEF‘s URL Manager, and we found that it was something like: ourclientjoomlawebsite.com/index.php?option=com_k2&Itemid=178&format=feed&id=55&lang=en&layout=category&task=category&view=itemlist. We then disabled sh40SEF, and we tried to load the non-SEF link, and, to our surprise, it worked! It displayed the actual RSS feed instead of redirecting to the normal view.
The thing is, the fact that it worked without sh404SEF made things a bit more confusing (despite the fact that we know that the culprit is sh404SEF), because it just didn’t make sense since sh404SEF should just rewrite the URL, and nothing more. We then spent many hours trying to find the cause of the problem, and we were close to declaring total defeat, but then, something happened: our client emailed us and told us that he has another extremely similar website, where the feed was working (that website had the exact same extensions and template installed – it was technically the same website but used another domain, protected by an .htpasswd, and was used for testing purposes).
We compared the 2 sites together and the only difference that we noticed was that on the development website (the website that didn’t have the problem), the following global configuration settings were all set to “No”:
- Search Engine Friendly URLs
- Use URL Rewriting
- Adds Suffix to URL
While on the actual, production website, the above settings were all set to Yes. So, we changed those settings on the production website to No, and, guess what? It worked! The problem was fixed!
But why did the above settings cause the problem?
We think this was because of a conflict between sh404SEF and Joomla’s own SEF. Typically, these two play well together but, in that particular scenario, they didn’t. We’re not sure of the exact cause because we didn’t do a thorough investigation.
If you have the same problem on your Joomla website, then try disabling the above settings in the global configuration, and see if that fixes the problem. If it doesn’t, then just contact us! We will find a solution (we always do), we will implement that solution, and we will not charge you much!