The new Joomla 3.8 Router and Route 66 plugin

In this blog post, we will take a look at the new router implementation of Joomla 3.8 and compare it with our fabulous Route 66 for Joomla extension. 

Joomla 3.8 New Router

Joomla 3.8 introduces a brand new router functionality. Without the doubt is a step forward, replacing the old router which has been there for years. However, looking at the available options we can see that there are very limited. To be more accurate, there is only one option available which allows you to remove the IDs from the article URLs:

This simply means that all the new router can do ( by the time of writing this blog post ) is transform your URLs from:

http://www.your-site.com/category-menu/1-article-alias

to:

http://www.your-site.com/category-menu/article-alias

We are pretty sure that this is an option that many users will use but is there an alternative? Why can't we have more flexible URLs like those found in WordPress? Let's take a look at Route 66.

Route 66

So, why do you need Route 66 and not stick to the core router? Let's start by taking a look at Route 66 URL option for articles:

So as you can see Route 66 does not restrict the user to using a set of options. Instead of that, it gives unmatched flexibility allowing to define your article URLs using patterns. Here are some examples of article URL patterns that Route 66 can handle:

• blog/{articleYear}/{articleMonth}/{articleAlias}
• {categoryAlias}/{articleAlias}
• {articleAlias}
• page-{articleId}
• {categoryPath}/{articleAlias}
• {categoryAlias}/
• {productAlias}.prod

Using patterns like the above you can get article URLs like:

http://www.your-site.com/blog/2017/10/2
http://www.your-site.com/category-alias/article-alias
http://www.your-site.com/article-alias
http://www.your-site.com/page-22
http://www.your-site.com/category-alias/sub-category-alias/article-alias
http://www.your-site.com/category-alias/
http://www.your-site.com/product-alias.prod

As you may have noticed already Route 66 comes with some outstanding features:

• URL patterns instead of predefined options.
• Custom words to your URLs ( see blog example).
• Date based URLs.
• Short and powerful URLs using just the article alias ( no menu link required ).
• Categories path in URLs.
• Trailing slashes.
• Custom URL suffix.
• Extremely fast URL handling.

Final words

Route 66 is the most flexible, elegant and fast extension for Joomla SEF URLs. It comes with some unique features that make it stand out from the competition. It's a free extension but we also have a PRO version if you use K2, Virtuemart or HikaShop. If you use Route 66 we hope that you really enjoy it. If you have any suggestions for improvements or new features please feel free to use our contact form. We would love to hear any thoughts!