SEF issues after upgrade to 2.0.24

[london]

I have recently upgraded (on a test site) to 2.0.24 and am facing a lot of SEF issues.  I have read many posts in this forum in regards to people having issues after having upgraded and have yet to find a solution.  Basically after having upgraded none of my links work, all giving a 404.  I have followed the steps in other posts, have set Joomla cacching to No Caching and have cleared my Joomla cache. I have followed the suggestions from other posts as to SEO settings so that they are:

1. In Joomla Global Configuration set

Search Engine Friendly URLs: Yes
Use URL rewriting: Yes
Adds Suffix to URL: No
Unicode Aliases: No

2. In VirtueMart Configuration > SEO tab set

SEO Disabled: No (leave unchecked)
Seo Suffix: -detail (or htm, html or whatever you like. Do NOT leave it blank! If you leave it blank, the router which creates the SEF urls will frequently fail)   
Translate Strings: Yes (checked)   
Use Product and Category IDs: No (leave unchecked)

The URL for this test site is:

http://173.254.28.35/~gordonsc/dmdorignew/

I don't know what else to do as I have tried everything in posts that are related to this issue.  Any help would be most appreciated.  Thanks!

[jjk]

Looks like you somehow disabled your shop. Does it work if you disable SEF urls?

If I type "skirts" into your search form, the urls which shows the 404 File not found error is:
http://173.254.28.35/~gordonsc/dmdorignew/component/search/?searchword=skirts&searchwordsugg=&option=com_search

But it should look similar to this:
http://173.254.28.35/~gordonsc/dmdorignew//search?keyword=skirts&limitstart=0&option=com_virtuemart&view=category

The error page shows the following error:
"NetworkError: 404 Not Found - http://173.254.28.35/~gordonsc/dmdorignew/component/search/?searchword=skirts&searchwordsugg=&option=com_search"

Do you have a "search word suggestion" extension installed? If yes, disable it, because it seems to produce conflicts.
Also, you might need to update your template to a version that is tested with VM 2.0.24.

...and ALWAYS test updates on a copy of your live shop before you update your live shop. Prevents surprises like this one!
Many people use this for testing on their own computer: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
There are many video tutorials on YouTube describing how to install xampp and Joomla on your own PC.

[london]

Thanks so much for the reply.  I'm not sure what you mean by 'disabled the shop' - what do you mean by this?  It works fine if I disable SEF, no problem at all.  Everything has been working fine up until this update was done.  I actually upgraded to this version at the suggestion of the template support people as I had recently bought a new template so I would assume this template is compatible with this version of VM.  What is a word suggestion extension?   I don't have any such a thing as far as I know. 

This is just a test site atm, not a live site . 

Thanks again, any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[london]

Just further info on this, looking at the path that the menu items are looking at, it's very clear why the 404 is being given.  For some reason, every link seems to be pointing to a category path /women-s/skirts.  It seems that somehow it is stuck on this and no matter what I do it is stuck, every category is stuck to this path. 

I have now installed sh404-SEF as I wanted to see what difference this would make.  This has made somewhat of a difference and links do sometimes work however I am now   randomly getting a Forbidden Access (Flooding) page.

I have tried this with different templates (have tried this with the template of the live site) and the same error occurs so I don't believe it is a template issue. 

URL is:

http://173.254.28.35/~gordonsc/dmdorignew/

URL of live site (if that is of any help) with older VM version:

http://www.duskmothoriginal.com

[jjk]

Given that urls like this one: http://173.254.28.35/~gordonsc/dmdorignew/index.php/womens-tops do work (note the 'index.php), I assume that you might have forgotten to rename the Joomla htaccess.txt into .htaccess and enable RewriteEngine On in the .htaccess file on your test site.
Also, I'm not shure if the Joomla/VM routers handle the ~ in the url correctly.

I would recommend not to use sh404sef along with VirtueMart, because usually it creates additional problems. Joomla and VirtueMart normally create perfect SEF urls, so there is no need for an additional SEF extension. It would also make your website slower. And btw - it reaches compatibility with VirtueMart by switching itself off (using the original VM router) while on VM pages, so it's useless anyway.

[london]

Thanks again for the reply and assistance.  So this is where it's at:

* Have disabled sh404SEF
* Have renamed .htaccess
* Have assigned a domain in case the tilda was a problem

The result is that everything is still the same.  I don't know what else to do.  I guess I could always not have SEF enabled.  I have never had a problem before upgrading, with SEF but now no matter what, it will not work. 

Any suggestions would be appreciated as I would really like to get this to work.

[jjk]

Did you also erase the sh404sef urls in the database? I'm slowly running out of ideas. Currently you seem to be the only one with this problem.

[Milbo]

I found a bug due the ordering.... Do use for standard ordering a field with `` in it? For a test please set the standard ordering to product name.

[AH]

Milbo

Any hint on the bug and fix?