Joomla Global: SEF URLS: How to Set up Search Engine Friendly URLs in Joomla 1.5

If you want to improve your Joomla Search Engine Optimization, you should turn on Joomla’s Search Engine Friendly URLs feature. This procedure explains how to do it.

1. From the Joomla admin screen, select Site > Global Configuration.
2. Click the Server tab and under the SEO Settings.
3. Click Yes for the Search Engine Friendly URLs option.
4. Click Save to save the Global settings.
   
   
   Joomla SEO Settings Box 
   • If you have problems with this setting, open the configuration.php file located in your Joomla directory and add your domain name to the live_site configuration variable; for example,
     var $live_site = ‘http://yoursite.com’;You might have to change permissions of the configuration.php file before you can upload it. Change it to 664.
   • If Joomla is installed in a sub directory on your site, change the live_site var to:
     var $live_site = ‘sub-dir’; where “sub-dir” is the directory in which you installed Joomla.

The settings above will produce a url that looks like this: http://mysite.com/index.php/my-page. If your host allows you to use a .htaccess file and Apache Rewrite, you can improve the URL by removing the index.php from the URL.

SEF URLS Using .htaccess and Apache Rewrite

To use this method, follow the instructions below.

1. Check with your web host to make sure you can use .htaccess and Apache Rewrite. If you can’t, you won’t be able to use this method.
2. In the directory in which Joomla is installed, find the file called htaccess.txt. Open this with a text editor or Dreamweaver and save it as .htaccess.Note: Many editors will not let you save a file with a preceeding period ( . ). If this is the case, use Notepad or your default system text editor.
3. Upload the .htaccess file to your web server.
4. From the Joomla admin screen, select Site > Global Configuration.
5. Click the Server tab and under the SEO Settings
6. Click Yes for the Search Engine Friendly URLs option.
7. Click Yes for the Use Apache mod_rewrite option.
8. Click Saveto save the Global settings.Joomla SEO Settings Box
   • If you have problems with this setting, open the configuration.php file located in your Joomla directory and add your domain name to the live_site configuration variable; for example,
     var $live_site = ‘http://yoursite.com’;You might have to change permissions of the configuration.php file before you can upload it. Change it to 664.
   • If Joomla is installed in a sub directory on your site, change the live_site var to:
     var $live_site = ‘sub-dir’; where “sub-dir” is the directory in which you install Joomla.

Note: I don’t think there is any advantage to adding a suffix to your urls; for example, my-page.html. There is no indication that the URL suffix helps your search engine ranking and it makes your URL look more complicated to the user.