Getting Started with Joomla

As you have noticed, the default Joomla page addresses can a bit "messy."  But actually, that is somewhat typical of a database driven website.

A default Joomla installation gives you page addresses that look like this:

And, as a result, many people wish for "prettier" URLs (page addresses).  Sometimes they want them just so they look nicer, sometimes they want them so that Google and the other search engines will perhaps pick them up easier or rank them "higher,"  sometimes they are desirable so you can tell someone ... "Go to this page:  www.mysite.com/news and get the latest info.

And, in Joomla, this is called SEF ... "Search Engine Friendly" URLs / page addresses.    And, it helps with SEO ... "Search Engine Optimization."

So, how do you do that in Joomla?   There are several options.

First of all, Joomla has a pretty decent "SEF" function built into it.   To turn it on, you have to do 2 things.

First of all, you go to your "Global Configuration" screen.  The last tab on that screen is titled "SEO."   On that tab, you will turn the first option on (It is titled "Search Engine Friendly URLS") by setting it to "Yes."

Now, there is one more step.

On your webserver, in the "root" directory of  your Joomla installation, there is a file called "htaccess.txt."   You will need to change that name of that file from "htaccess.txt" to ".htaccess".  (notice the dot (.) at the beginning and no ".txt" at the end.

The .htaccess file is a file used by your webserver to turn on and off certain features that are done at the server level, and is used by Joomla to help make these "easy to read" page addresses.

Now, how do you rename that file?

Again, there are several ways to do this.

If you are using an FTP program, you can use that FTP program to log in to your account, go to the folder where your joomla site is located, and rename the htaccess.txt to .htaccess there.

Or, you can user your hosting "control panel" or "cpanel."  There is usually some type of "file manager" there that let's you go in and work with the files in the various folders of your website.  You can use that to rename the file.

Or, there are even very nice "file managers" that you can install into Joomla itself to give you that capacity.  For example this one:

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,102/Itemid,35/

Once you do that, you will have turned on Joomla's default SEO / SEF tools.   And that will get you a URL (page address) that looks like this:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/component/option,com_contact/task,view/contact_id,3/Itemid,37/

Hmmm.  Not bad, but still not great.   By the way, Joomla 1.5 improves this quite a bit and will give you an address of:

www.yourwebsite.com/index.php/john   or www.yourwebsite.com/john.

So, a number of people have written "extensions" to Joomla that significantly improve Joomla's ability to write easy to read URLs.  In fact, there is a whole section of the Joomla Extensions Directory (found at http://extensions.joomla.org) dedicated to this.

For example, look here:  http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,listcats/cat_id,1803/Itemid,35/

There are a bunch of these listed here.  I've used sh404sef very successfully, while I've heard good reports of many of the others from other Joomla users.

Using  these "3rd party extensions" to Joomla will give you these very nice page addresses like this:

Now, let me say one thing.  Setting up these SEF tools can be a bit tricky, and can be a bit frustrating, especially as a newbie.  But, work through the documentation, check the website of the developer, read their FAQ, and you'll get it.

But, don't let yourself get stuck at this point of developing your site.  Work on your site, work on the contents and structure, knowing that you add this a bit later down the road and it will make those page addresses look great!

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