I just updated a site to J3.4.1 & updated K2 to the most recent. The home page uses K2 Categories to display items from 3 different cat's. Prior to the upgrade, the URL structure for each item pulled the all the relevant info for the item, and displayed the URL as: ...com/category-alias/sub-cat-alias/item-alias. All is used was the native Joomla SEF settings, no sh404sef, & no K2 advanced SEF settings. Now, to get the same URL structure, i have had to turn on the K2 advanced settings, but it only works within the category. The home page now displays the item's URL as ...com/item-alias. This has created an issue with module settings ion the item page since now the item lives under multiple URLs, not just the intended full URL. I added StyleWares canonical plugin in, but there was no effect.

Any ideas where to look next?

Now, to get the same URL structure, i have had to turn on the K2 advanced settings, but it only works within the category.

What was the URL pattern you where getting after the update (no advanced SEF).
Also did you change anything in your menu structure?

The home page now displays the item's URL as com/item-alias

Is this category mapped into a menu item?

I have since reverted to 3.3+ until i can solve this.

See: goo.gl/g9hN0X. The 5 initial home page items, plus the items displayed in the tabs further down display the URL as ...com/Top-Level-Category-Alias/Sub-Category-Alias/Item-Tile-Alias. After the update, the URL structure was ...com/item/Item-#-Item-Alias. Nothing was changed in the menu structure.

The Top Level Cat & Sub Cat's are mapped into a menu item, and additional lower level items in the menu are displayed via tag.

I believe this is a Joomla issue. I upgraded Joomla first, then noticed it. I then upgraded K2 via the new extension update option, and the issue was not resolved.

I have never encountered it in the past to be honest.
I doubt this is a K2 issue since we are using Joomla!'s router and you would not be the only user affected.
On the other hand I doubt that Joomla! would cause such an issue. My debt would be on a 3rd party extension.

My hope is someone will see this and be able to recommend a fix that they have used due to a similar experience. I cannot ID any added plugin or hack that may rewrite the URL, but i plan on setting up a dev environment and stripping the site down to the basics to try and pin point any issue. If i find something i will posts.

I believe this is an issue with the Joomla Router and how 3.4 now handles canonical URLS's:

joomlaseo.com/Blog/seo-related-progress-in-joomla-3-4
joomlaseo.com/Blog/joomla-3-and-canonical-url

I have dup'd the site into a dev environment and I am in the process of turning off modules, plugins and components to try and narrow down an issue with a 3rd party, but nothing yet. To ensure it was not my custom template, i updated K2 to the most recent & tested in Beez3 and Prostar with the same results.

The only issue i keep running into is the item URLS's from multiple categories on the home page. There is no association. If anyone would like to see, i can create a log in.

There are a couple of things you can still do,
a)Look at Joomla!'s forums for a fix and
b) Send us access from the contact form so we can take a look.
www.joomlaworks.net/support/contact

@Ian

Just tested and i cannot verify the issue. Using K2 2.6.9 and Joomla! 3.4.1 . Created a home page menu link to K2 categories and selected three categories. Created a menu link pointing to a single K2 category and selected one of those three categories. The generated links of items of that category in the front page, as expected, are mapped correctly to the second menu link.

On top of that, in your first message you write that you were not using any SEF extensions or K2 advanced SEF. The pattern you mention however cannot be generated by K2 without a third party SEF extension or K2 advanced SEF. The only way to achieve such a pattern using just K2 is to create three menu links, one for each category and one for the item.

In any case, if you want to maintain the URLs as they were before the update, you should not enable K2 advanced SEF if it was not enabled before.

@Lefteris, thanks for looking into this. Do you have a link i could review? What is the URL structure of the home page category items?