The URLs Were Revolting!

So, as I was saying, Guru Simon was telling me my URLs are ugly and Google etc will not date them until they get a facelift.

A quick look on JoomlaForums showed a numebr of people asking about the problem and a mixed bag of replies ranging from "chk ur coking, ur cloacking iz rong" through to "your host is crap, come and buy some off me instead".

A quick look in Google brought me to http://docs.joomla.org/SEO

The problem is a compatitibility issue that crops up on some hosts but not others. The answer is not to go all Star Trek (pun on cloaking. Oh, you got it? Sorry.) The answer was simply to enter a short string into the configuration.php file in my home directory.


Here's what I had to do:

open up the filemanager of my hosting service
select configuration.php
copy it with the added suffix .bak (for safety)
change the permissions to 644 (to make it saveable when I edit it)
edit configuration.php
in the editor change var $live_site = ' ' to var $live_site = 'http://teamcoachingnetwork.com'
save configuration.php

in Joomla! administrator
select Site/global configuration
select seo-friendly urls
preview and enjoy your new SEO friendly urls!!!

Now I have gorgeous URLs that any search engine should be proud to take home to its parents, elt alone bump up the search rankings.

I cannot tell you how chuffed I feel that I sorted this myself and didn't need to wait until either my coffee appointment with Guru Si on Friday!

Or until someone on JoomlaForums sold me a new hosting package.

'Til next time

Dave

My site is here.
Joomla! is based here.