Joomla config on GoDaddy hosting

okay, this post is mainly a note to myself … since I’m so disorganized these days that if I write this down on paper, it will surely get lost. But, if someone else finds this in a search and it saves the hours of aggravation that I’ve had with this issue, then hurray!

Problem: SEF’s (search engine friendly URL’s) not working with Module Rewrite. Links to articles show either “404 not found” pages or message that says “no input item found”

Solution: Do the following:

  1. change htaccess.txt file to .htaccess
  2. edit .htaccess
    • comment out the line “Options +FollowSymLinks
    • If Joomla is not installed in the root directory – uncomment the line # RewriteBase / (and add the path to the Joomla root directory). Example: RewriteBase /jl if Joomla is installed in the jl directory
  3. In Joomla admin, edit Global Configuration/Site
    • Enable Search Engine Friendly URL’s and Use Apache mod_rewrite. *Add suffix to URL’s is optional*  – note, you must have write access for Web User to the configuration.php file or these changes will not apply.
  4. In Tools menu, Clean Cache – all files.
  5. Clear browser cache
  6. Test site