We need to ensure our website is discoverable with the “www” or without the “www” typed before your domain name.
In short: when a user enters “mydomain.com” or “www.mydomain.com” both of these URLs should resolve to a valid web address. Okay – how will we achieve this?
Firstly – FTP or use your cPanel’s File Manager and rename the .htaccess file in your website root folder.
Generally, with Joomla, the .htaccess file is named: “htaccess.txt”
You need to change it to: “.htaccess” (Yup, note the dot right at the start).
See here:
In Joomla administrator – go to your “Global Configuration” and turn on the “Use URL Rewrite” option.
As in step 1, go back to your “.htaccess” file and now open the file to edit. Find the “RewriteEngine On” heading in the “.htaccess” file. Just beneath it add the following two lines of text:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
PS: Remember to replace: “mydomain” with the name of your own domain. For example, in my case my domain name is programmer.co.za. See screenshot below:
Save the “.htaccess” file and open Joomla Administrator again.
In Joomla select the following menus at the top: Components -> Redirect.
Click the “New” button near the top right of your screen.
Complete the fields as follows:
Source URL: here you enter your complete URL. For example: “http://www.mydomain.com”
Destination URL: here you just enter the directory/page name part of the URL.
For example: “go-here”. You do not enter the domain name part.
After completing – click the “Save” button, once again near the top right of your screen.
Important:
Make sure that the “Redirect Manager” plugin in Joomla is enabled. If you do not see the enabled message in the green font at the bottom of the “Redirect Manager” page as in the screenshot below then follow the steps below…
Redirect plugin is enabled.
In Joomla Administrator go to: Extensions -> Plug-in Manager.
Now in the “Filter” input box type: “Redirect” and hit the “Search” button.
In the results, you will find “System – Redirect”. Select this line and click the “Enabled” button near the top right of your screen.
Or you can simply click on the red circle in the “Status” column which will also enable this Plug-in.
