How to Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs

This week we'll walk you through how to enable Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs in Joomla.

This mystical feat requires no extensions!

Here's how you do it:

1. Go to the Administration area of your Joomla site and Global Configuration (or in the menus, site >> Global Configuration).
2. In the 'Site' settings, on the right you will see 'SEO Settings', click on the 'Yes' radio button to enable Search Engine Friendly URLs

That's it! You have just enabled SEF URLs for your site. However, if you would like to clean up the URLs even more, read on...

To shorten up the URLs ever more, follow the next steps:

1. Select 'Yes' for the option to use Apache mod_rewrite *ONLY if you are on a server that uses Apache (which will most likely be the case, but if you're unsure check with your hosting company).
2. Go to your joomla_root directory and locate the file named htaccess.txt and rename the file to .htaccess (notice the proceeding dot . ) This can be done either via FTP, or by following our newsletter on How to Manage Directory Files from Joomla Admin to access your joomla_root directory and the htaccess.txt file.

You should now have nice clean URLs that are human readable.

If you find that upon trying to visit links in your site's menus you are getting 404 errors, you can simply go back to your configuration area and set the 'Use Apache mod_rewrite' option to 'No', and rename your .htaccess back to htaccess.txt Your issue should clear up after.

Additionally, should you wish to add a suffix after your URL (.html for example), you may select the third option in the SEO Settings 'Add suffix to URLs'.

As always, if you need any help with this feel free to post in our forum for support if you are a member.

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