Today's Joomla Tip: 404 Errors and mod_rewrite

Here's another tidbit about Apache servers and .htaccess.

Usually porting a Joomla site goes fairly smooth, but once in a while, for various reasons, there is trouble when turning on mod_rewrite for SEF. Usually it's a problem with the .htaccess file, some of which I've addressed in earlier posts. But sometimes, Apache server configuration settings can be the culprit.

One such scenario is a 404 error I recieved when navigating to anywhere but the home page. I couldn't be sure if it was the .htaccess file or a server setting, but then I found a great example of how to test whether mod_rewrite is enabled on the server.

It's important to note that redirects in the .htaccess file will still work, even if mod_rewrite is disabled. You need to specifically test with a rewrite rule. For example,

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^link([^/]*).html$ rewrite.php [L]

...in your .htaccess file should redirect any .html file to a file called rewrite.php. If you can reach the rewrite.php file directly in your browser, but arbitrary .html files return a 404 error, you'll need to contact you web service provider and request that mod_rewrite be turned on.

If you'd like more help, then contact me here or via our website design Ottawa shop.

Today's Joomla Tip: Fixing 403 Forbidden Errors

Apache mod_security getting you down? When this feature is enabled on your Apache server, you might encounter the following message when trying to save Global Configuration:

"403 Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /administrator/index.php on this server. "

You can disable this feature for your Joomla space by adding the following to your .htaccess file:

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

If you'd like more help, then contact me via SEO Ottawa or via our website design Ottawa shop.

Today's Joomla Tip: JCE Content Editor

The JCE editor is a great alternative to the TinyMCE editor that comes standard with Joomla. For one thing, it has a built-in spell checker! You can set your editor to highlight misspelled words in your content, as you would see in most email clients.

It also has a few other nifty tools not found in the TinyMCE editor, and allows you to switch between HTML and formatted views without doing round trips to the server. It's a little thing that actually saves a lot of time.

Setup is pretty simple, if you keep a few things in mind. Once you've downloaded the JCE package you'll find that there are three installation files to upload to Joomla:

com_jce_152
plg_jce_152
jce_iframe_150

The first two should be installed as Joomla plug-ins. Go to Extensions -> Install/Uninstall and then browse to and upload com_jce_152 and plg_jce_152.

The third component should be installed as a JCE plugin. Go to Components -> JCE Administration -> Install and then browse to and upload jce_iframe_150.

Once these are sucessfully installed, go to Global Configuration and click on the Site tab. Under "Site Settings, set your "Default WYSIWYG Editor" to JCE, click Save and you're done!

If you'd like more help, then contact me here via SEO Ottawa or via my website design Ottawa site.

Today's Joomla Tip: Joomla 1.5 and SEF

I've tried a number of SEF add-on components to make my Joomla websites Search Engine Friendly. In the end I discovered that the core SEF module included with Joomla 1.5 works best.

However, moving websites from a development platform to live servers sometimes caused the SEF component to stop working. When enabled, all my pages would return "Internal Server Error". After a little investigation, here is what I've found:

1. Make sure the file ".htaccess" in the root gets ported along with the rest of the website! SEF, and in particular, Apache mod_rewrite will not work unless this file is present and correctly configured.

2. Porting a site sometimes means moving it to a different directory. If you're having trouble, try uncommenting the following line in .htaccess:

RewriteBase /

Where "/" is the root directory. If your joomla installation is not in the root of the webspace, be sure to specify the correct path here instead of just "/".


If you'd like more help, then contact me.

Today's Joomla Tip: Typography

Using your active template's CSS file you can set typography consistantly for the entire site. In particular, make sure the "Heading" styles are set to your preference. This way, when adding artical content you can set paragraphs as heading 1 though 6 with the confidence that style and colors will be maintained through all your pages.

In Joomla 1.5 go to Extentions -> Template Manager and select the currently active template (flagged as "Default"). Then click "Edit CSS", select the entry "template.css" and click "Edit". Here is an example of Heading definitions:

/* Heading */
h1 {font-size: 200%;font-weight: normal;color: #27AF4B}
h2 {font-size: 125%}
h3 {font-size: 125%;font-weight: normal;color: #27AF4B}
h4 {font-size: 115%}
h5 {font-size: 115%;font-weight: normal;color: #27AF4B;font-style:italic}

If you'd like more help, then contact me.

Website Design on a Shoe String Using Joomla

Joomla is a fantastic tool. You can get a fully loaded modern site, with all dynamic and fancy features, for a fraction of a cost of a regular website design - thanks to pre-existing components.

In a matter of days I was able to build a site with full search capabilities, a site map, dynamic drop-down top menus, a SEF component, and a complete ecommerce solution. Doing this from scratch would take weeks!

Today's Joomla Tip:

If you are setting up VirtueMart e-commerce on your Joomla website, do not customize Typography on your template until the site is fully assembled. We learned the hard way and then had to spent time re-adjusting display on the VirtueMart.