Joomla has an in-built SEO url rewriting function, but it does not come automatically activated.

To activate the SEO-friendly url function, you need to be logged in as administrator.

But first, you should make sure you have uploaded the htacess file. If you installed joomla through cpanel, you may already have a htaccess file, but check whether it is blank or not. It shouldn’t be, if you want the SEO url rewriting to work. I checked mine and noticed that it was indeed blank, and so I had to upload another one.

The htacess file has important instructions for your web server. Joomla comes with a htaccess.txt file. You need to open this on your hardrive, and save it again as ‘.htacess’ (without the apostrophes of course!)

Once you’ve done this - and followed the instructions in the htacess.txt file, which involve uncommenting (by removing the # as indicated) the appropriate section - you will upload the new file to your server.

What section you uncomment will depend on whether you are going to use the native Joomla SEo friendly urls function, or a third party one. I’ll go through this point in another post.

But briefly, when you add seo friendly urls in joomla, using the native joomla functions, you still have a url that is essentially meaningless to your visitors. And it is not really that different - except for a few numbers at the end - from hundreds of thousands of other sites out there as these SEO joomla urls use the same format:

yoursite./content/view/2/12/

etc!

But first, let’s get back to how to add seo friendly urls in joomla using joomla’s native function.

When you upload the new htacess file, you must put it in the directory that the main joomla installation is in. If it’s in a subdirectory, put it there. If it’s in the root directory (ie you access your site as mysite.com), then you put it in the root directory.

1. On the top menu bar, click on ‘Global Configuration’ which is under ‘Site’.

2. Then, go the SEO menu at the far right of the panel presented. Select.

3. Select ‘yes’ where it says ‘Search Engine Friendly URLS’.

4. Now, click apply, then save (at the top right hand side of your screen).

And you’re done!

Now, you should check that they are functioning properly. Remember to refresh your browser if you have had your home page open whilst you were doing this.

If there’s a problem, make sure that your configuration file is writable. You will be able to check this by looking in your administrator area, when you are in ‘Global Configurations’. It will say whether it is writeable or not. If it wasn’t, you’ll have to make it writeable and repeat the whole process again.

If that wasn’t the problem, then you should check the htacess file. It has to be there first, before you do any of this.

If it was, you should then check the actual file to make sure you did everything right.

Finally, if that was all done properly and the urls are not seo friendly now, you might have to contact your webhost to make sure they support the changes. There is more information in the forums about this (though it will probably follow in another blog post!)

You can get more help on setting up Joomla with these videos.