index.php and .htaccess

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Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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  • pastorbill Friend
    June 25, 2011 at 6:52 am #165635

    I’m fairly much a newbie but self-teach quickly. My site is http://lighthouseaz.com.

    1. My desire is that my site uses non-www urls – success through .htaccess file.

    2. Also, my desire is that my url’s don’t reflect index.php – mostly successful again through the .htaccess file, except that when I click the logo it directs to mysite/index.php – IS THERE A WAY TO CORRECT THAT OR JUST NOT WORRY ABOUT IT?

    3. After I edited my .htaccess file I saw a different issue: On the children only of my HOME button, the url’s include HOMEPAGE (EX: Pre-changes: http://lighthouseaz.com/important-news/service-times; Post-changes: http://lighthouseaz.com/homepage/important-news/service-times) – Just wondering if this is correctable.

    Did I do something wrong in my .htaccess file? THANKS PEOPLE.

    TomC Moderator
    June 25, 2011 at 7:22 am #398349

    Well, first of all . . . . would you be willing to share the process and modifications you made to your .htaccess file to achieve the results you did? (I think such a “how to” would be a great tutorial for other members)

    As for your ancillary issues … I’m afraid those – albeit interesting – issues are above my knowledgebase level at this time. Nevertheless, I certainly would like to follow this thread to see if a solution is presented. It’s a great question and issue topic.

    I will submit a support-ticket for you to try to help you obtain more expertise assistance.

    Incidentally … Your site looks GREAT !!! A fantastic utilization of the JA-Methys template.

    1 user says Thank You to TomC for this useful post

    1. pastorbill
    pastorbill Friend
    June 25, 2011 at 8:50 am #398364

    Thanks for the kudos on the site. This is actually my first commercial site (I’ve done some personal blog sites, etc.). My hat is off to those that do it for a living 🙂 – when I undertook the project I really didn’t know it was going to take as long as it did. It helps to be able to ask questions and not feel like a dummy in an open Joomla forum. It also helps to have a great template to start with.

    Onto the .htaccess changes. Please excuse my explanations if I say something wrong. This was a first time for me so if anyone can tell me what I did wrong I would be much appreciated:

    1. My site is with GODADDY on an APACHE web server. The operating system is Linux.
    2. On Apache ONLY you rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess to control redirects and url rewrites. It pays to google what you want to do – or ask someone that knows for sure. ALWAYS backup when you make changes to this file in case you have to undo.
    3. In the htaccess file you will find many lines commented out and some that aren’t – which are obviously the command lines.
    4. RewriteEngine ON must be ON – this gives permissions to rewrite (excuse me if I sound obvious).
    5. There is an optional line (Options +FollowSymLinks) that was a command line but I discovered that GODADDY possibly already has this set in the server configuration so I commented the line out (do your research). This MAY, however, be the reason that HOMEPAGE is showing up on the HOME button children links.
    6. The next two lines redirect all “www” requests to non-www urls:
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.lighthouseaz.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://lighthouseaz.com/$1 [R=301,L]
    7. My research said to put in the next two lines to strip the /index.php from the url:
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule .* index.php [L]

    This actually worked except for the logo itself. I believe there is some other code in the file that somehow prevents it, or perhaps in a different file. I didn’t research what the -f and -d actually do but they work so I’m not messing with them for now.

    None of the issues that remain (HOMEPAGE on the few links and the INDEX.PHP in the logo link) are enough trouble that I’m going to waste a whole lot of time with this. BUT the OCD person living in my body wants to know. :laugh:

    Thanks for the help. Hope this thread helps someone else.

    TomC Moderator
    June 25, 2011 at 9:08 am #398366

    Insofar as our web development experience goes, you and I are cut from the same cloth, Pastor Bill . . .
    (pardon the religious-reference pun) 😉

    While I have learned a great deal (from square one) over the last 4+ years since discovering Joomla and being a member here at JoomlART, I am in no, way, shape or form any kind of expert level developer, programmer or coding whiz. My current (and ever developing) knowledgebase comes from – as you eluded to – personal research (i.e. Google), asking a lot of questions and a whole lot of trial-and-error. I do enjoy, however, giving back and helping others as best I can – when I can.

    As I said, I will be following this thread and, too, hope that one of JA’s more skilled coding experts will take a look at your issue and see if he/she can help you achieve the results you are wanting.

    Keep up the great work … the site looks great and very appropriate for the overall theme of your Church. I am sure it will continue to develop and improve as time passes and more and more of your congregation embrace this additional resource for information and community.

    TOM

    pastorbill Friend
    June 25, 2011 at 6:26 pm #398432

    Yes, the website is definitely a work in progress. We have plans to add video streaming, a bookstore, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t remember at the time. Appreciate you looking into it for me.

    Sherlock Friend
    June 27, 2011 at 4:50 am #398557

    Hi pastorbill,
    About issue 1 : To remove www in url you can add following code in .htaccess file :
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.lighthouseaz.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://lighthouseaz.com/$1 [R=301,L]
    About issue 2,3 : I recommend you use some sef component they can solve that problem for you.
    Sorry because this is heavy task and it is not in scrope of Ja Product support so i can’t help more for you in this case.

    pastorbill Friend
    June 27, 2011 at 4:09 pm #398683

    Hainn84, I changed my status back to “question” because you didn’t really answer it. Someone out there might actually know the answer whether or not it is in the scope of the JA product or not.

    Plus, why cannot this be a JA issue? The ONLY time the index.php shows up is when I click on the logo. Where is the link in the logo coded?

    AND, the ONLY place the HOMEPAGE shows up is in the children of the HOME menu item. Where do these items get their coding?

    pastorbill Friend
    June 28, 2011 at 2:59 am #398750

    SUCCESS on issue #2: I decided to mess around with header.php and found there were two lines in there that had the logo link to be href=”index.php” – I simply changed it to href=”/”. Now when you click on the logo you simply get directed to homepage WITHOUT the /index.php. Just thought people might like to know.

    jsliao Friend
    June 28, 2011 at 3:28 am #398758

    for #3, the issue could be that your articles are published under sections or categories called homepage? or are the uncategorized? check on that and let me know 🙂

    pastorbill Friend
    June 28, 2011 at 4:12 am #398767

    Thanks for giving me something new to look at. But alas, that didn’t pan out either. They are definitely under the “home” menu item so you may be on to something there but they are categorized. Since this is the last of my issues that were bugging me I’m not real concerned. But keep the possible solutions coming. I’m willing to try anything.

    Sherlock Friend
    June 28, 2011 at 8:51 am #398792

    Hi pastorbill,
    Sorry you about the first issue,i checked agian and see it is my mistake,i misunderstood you in the first issue, about it i have solution for you now :
    Open header.php file in templatesja_methysblocks folder,find following code section :

    <h1 class="logo">
    <a href="index.php" title="<?php echo $siteName; ?>"><span><?php echo $siteName; ?></span></a>
    </h1>

    Please remove “index.php” on obove code and replace by your url without index.php
    Hope can help you.
    thanks

    jsliao Friend
    June 28, 2011 at 9:42 am #398808

    I was in the right track. The homepage keyword stems from your Menu alias. look under the menu manager and then the home menuitem. Its title is insignificant since you are using an icon but the alias should be ‘homepage’. you can change it to something else to ‘enhance’ your SEF url but I don’t think It can be removed.

    Hope this helps. Cheers

    1 user says Thank You to jsliao for this useful post

    1. pastorbill
    pastorbill Friend
    June 28, 2011 at 9:07 pm #398932

    Hainn84, If you read above in one of the other posts you will see that I already applied your solution. However, by replacing index.php with my site it actually ended up with mysite.com/mysite.com, so I ended up replacing index.php with just a “/” and that fixed it.

    jsliao, THANK YOU! Even though I can’t delete it I certainly appreciate your knowledge as to WHY I can’t delete it. I don’t mind leaving it, but it was really bugging me as to why. THANKS!

    jsliao Friend
    June 29, 2011 at 1:36 am #398960

    You’re welcome. I learnt from it too. Cheers

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This topic contains 14 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by  jsliao 13 years, 4 months ago.

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