Let's switch on Joomla!'s friendly URL functionality:
1. Navigate to Site | Global Configuration. In the Site tab, there's a SEO Settings section. Set Search Engine Friendly URLs to Yes:
2. Click on Apply and preview the frontend of the website. In the browser, URLs will now look something like this:
This is much better as these URLs are shorter and easier to understand. However, as you browse your site, you'll see that all URLs share the
index.php
bit. You can change this using the other SEO Settings. This requires a bit more work than just selecting Yes; you'll also have to rename a file on the web server. Feeling confident? Let's try it out.Note
If you've installed Joomla! locally you may experience some difficulties with the next step that requires renaming a file to
.htaccess
(with a leading dot). By default, Mac OS Finder and Microsoft Windows Explorer don't allow you to rename filenames starting with a dot. There are several workarounds...