Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla!

Improve the SEO performance of your website with Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla, the most comprehensive plugin for managing canonical URLs in Joomla! created by the HTML Crusco team.

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla works on Joomla! 4 and Joomla! 5

What does

The Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla offers complete control of Canonical URLs in Joomla and solves content redundancy problems caused by two or more different URLs pointing to the same page.

These problems, especially present in CMS-managed websites (where the same page is accessible from two or more URLs), can damage search engine rankings, which may consider content redundancy as a fraudulent practice and penalise the website for illegal activities, such as SPAM.

It is clear that canonical URLs are a very important aspect of SEO.

The correct setting of canonical URLs and the inclusion of the related canonical tag link in the HTML code, tells search engines that such content should not be marked as duplicate, but as resources that always refer to the same canonical URL.
It is this URL that has to be indexed, shown in search results and that allows users to arrive on the right page of the website every time.

Features

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla is the most comprehensive plugin for managing canonical URLs in Joomla!

Supports all standard
components and views of Joomla!

Supports all standard components and views of Joomla!
On these, which we will see in detail later in the list of supported items, the plugin can run in two main modes:

Auto
Manual

But one does not rule out the other!
As you will discover in a moment, one of the advantages of this plugin is its "hybrid operation".

Auto mode

Auto mode is the plugin's default mode..
When activated, the plugin automatically generates canonical URLs and inserts the related canonical tag link for supported items.

No action on the user's part is required for the plugin to work: simply install and activate it.
Canonical URLs update automatically whenever the site's navigation structure, categories, articles and all supported items are changed.

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla is 100% compatible with the new SEF system of Joomla! 5.
Canonical URLs are automatically generated considering all SEF settings:

URL ID on/off
URL suffix
Trailing slash no change/force with/force without

Automatically generates
canonical URLs

In the Publishing/Metadata tab of the Joomla items, it is possible to check each automatically generated canonical URL and, thanks to "hybrid operation", decide whether to use a custom canonical URL instead of the automatically generated one.

Hybrid operation: auto mode with URL customization option

Manual mode

Deactivating automatic mode switches to manual mode.
In this mode, canonical URLs are no longer auto-generated but must be entered individually in the Publishing/Metadata tab as a custom canonical URL for each element.
This will be placed in the canonical tag link of the HTML page.

We at HTML Crusco recommend the use of manual mode only to expert users who have special needs, such as having to "canonicalize" only a part of the content, or having full control over the canonical URLs on each website content to implement special SEO strategies.

Supports
custom Canonical URLs

We would like to remind these users that our plugin also offers "hybrid operation" for manual mode and that it is therefore possible to use the auto canonical URL generation function to automatically fill in the custom canonical URL field! 😉

However, in this case, the canonical URL remains a custom canonical URL and therefore will not have the advantages of Auto Mode, such as the automatic update of the field in the event of a change in the navigation structure of the website or the article category tree.

Hybrid operation: manual mode with auto generate function

Multilanguage

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla fully supports the Joomla! multilanguage system and therefore generate canonical URLs and inserts the related canonical tag link even for websites with content in different languages.

Supports websites
with multilanguage content

Supported components and views

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla supports all standard components and views of Joomla!

Articles
Multipage articles
Single article
Articles category
Category blog (supports pagination and tags filter)
Category list (supports pagination and tags filter)
List all categories in an article category tree
Archived articles (supports pagination and categories filter)
Featured articles (supports pagination)
Tag (full supports of hierarchy)
Tagged items (supports pagination, content types filter and language filter)
Compact list of tagged items (supports pagination, content types filter and language filter)
List all tags (supports pagination, parent tag filter and language filter)
Search (supports pagination, pre-filled search term and search filters)
Login form
Registration form
Password reset
Username reminder request
Newsfeeds
Single newsfeed
Feed category
List news feeds in a category
List all categories in a news feed category tree
Contacts
Contacts category
Single contact
List contacts in a category
Featured Contacts
List all categories in a news feed category tree
Menu item

The option to setting a custom canonical URL on each single menu item could be useful for third-party Joomla! extensions not yet supported by the plugin.
Instead, for all supported items, the HTML Crusco team recommends placing the custom canonical URL on the element to which the menu item links and never on the menu item itself.

To learn more, we recommend you read the article Canonical URL in Joomla: attention to the URL hierarchy on HTML Crusco blog

SEO URL structure for pagination

By enabling this option, the Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla! will allow you to boost SEO performance of your website by building a robust pagination URL structure that joins the canonical URL with links to next and previous pages.

Create the relationship structure
for multipage content

This feature is applied to supported items for which pagination is provided:

multipage articles, archived articles, featured articles, category blog, category list, search, tagged items, compact list of tagged items, list all tags.

Compatibility

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla needs PHP 8.x, is compatible with Joomla! 4 and Joomla! 5 and also works by disabling the backward compatibility plugin of Joomla! 5.

Joomla! 5 native support

To learn more about the backward compatibility plugin and why you should switch it off, read the article on Joomla! Community Magazine.

Configuration

Just install and enable the Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla! to make it work with the default settings.
The behaviour of the plugin can be customized at any time by accessing the plugin settings and adjusting the parameters of each section.

Crusco Canonical URL plugin for Joomla must be enabled on the Joomla Plugins page

General

Auto mode
Enables automatic canonical URL generation.
Thanks to hybrid operation, even in automatic mode it is possible to specify a customised canonical URL for supported items.
Remove trailing slash
Removes the final slash from the canonical URL rendered in the frontend pages.
Show all for multipage articles
It suggests that search engines index the URL of the entire article as the canonical URL of each page of a multipage article.
SEO URL structure for pagination
Boost SEO performance of your website by building a robust pagination URL structure that joins the canonical URL with links to next and previous pages.

Articles

Article
Enable canonical URL for each article, including multipage articles.
Category
Enable canonical URLs for article categories and for the following Joomla views:
- Category blog
- Category list
Categories
Enable the canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- List all categories in an article category tree
Archived
Enable the canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Archived articles
Featured
Enable the canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Featured articles

Smart search

Search
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Smart search -> Search

Users

Login
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Login form
Registration
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Registration form
Password reset
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Password reset
Username reminder request
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Username reminder request

News Feeds

News Feed
Enable canonical URL for each single newsfeed
Category
Enable canonical URL for each feed category and for the following Joomla view:
- List news feeds in a category
Categories
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- List all categories in a news feed category tree

Contacts

Contacts
Enable canonical URL for each single contact
Category
Enable canonical URL for each contact category and for the following Joomla view:
- List contacts in a category
Featured
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- Featured Contacts
Categories
Enable canonical URL for the following Joomla view:
- List all categories in a news feed category tree

Menu items
Enable custom canonical URL for each menu item.

This option could be useful for third-party Joomla! extensions not yet supported by the plugin.
For all supported items, we recommends placing the custom canonical URL on the element to which the menu item links and never on the menu item itself.

To learn more, we recommend you read the article Canonical URL in Joomla: attention to the URL hierarchy on HTML Crusco blog

Clean custom canonical URLs

Select what to clean
This functionality allows you to delete all custom canonical URLs you have entered for each type of element (articles, contacts, tags, etc.).

Why should you delete them?
For example, because you want to try out the automatic mode.
Or because you want to change your SEO strategy for canonical URLs.

Of course you can manually delete the canonical URLs entered, one by one... if you have a website with few contents.
But if you have dozens and dozens of articles and categories or hundreds of tags, it becomes a burdensome and boring task that I bet you would gladly avoid.
So why not have the plugin do it in a few moments? 😉