Joomla ships with a special
which, amongst other things, ensures that
your web site URLs do
not include the words "index.php".
If you've already set this up before
you will have done this from the "System - Global Configuration"
and set the "Use URL Rewriting" to 'Yes',
having created that special
.htaccess file on your web server.
If this all worked fine, then you
can happily proceed with the .htaccess
maker part of Admintools.
You will find the .htaccess maker
in the "Security" section.
Remember, if you've already been able
to create without any modification
the .htaccess file, then you
can happily proceed with this section.
However, you should know that any
changes made here have the possibility
of completely blocking your entire website.
So before you proceed,
you should make sure that you have FTP
or some hosting control panel file
manager access to get your
site back online just in
case something goes wrong.
If when you used Joomla's own
.htaccess file you had to make
some edits for it to work on your web host,
you will find those right down the bottom of this file.
The most likely ones that you will have changed
was to set the "follow symlinks" to "Yes"
and the base directory of your site
from slash to some subdirectory.
If you were able to make Joomla's own .htaccess
file work without any changes
you can simply leave these as the default.
If we scroll back to the top
we can see this .htaccess maker
includes various options to
enhance the basic security of your website.
Each one of these is documented
n the Admintools documentation section
of the Akeebabackup.com website.
Remember, defaults are there for a
very good reason and if you don't
know what something is then you
should leave it alone.
In addition to some web site security
there is also some additional server
protection that is provided.
Some components may work in a non-standard
way and you will have to provide exceptions
to allow direct access to their files.
Here we can see three examples
for Akeeba Backup, Admintools,
and the Joomla! update component.
It may be that you will have to add
additional exceptions for some of your
components that are on your website.
In addition
we have the opportunity to create some custom
.htaccess rules.
If you don't know what these are
don't worry about it - it doesn't apply to you.
But, if you've had to create some already
then this is where you will add them.
If you had previously added some code
to change your PHP version
you should copy that code here.
Otherwise your host may default
to a very old version of PHP.
The final section Optimisation
and utility adds some
additional tweaks to your website
and you shouldnt need to change these.
When you are happy with the settings, click
on the big green "Save and Create .htaccess".
Your new .htaccess file has been
written to the disk and a backup
has been taken of the old one.
As this point, you mjust check
to make sure that every part of your
website is working as it did before.
It should, but as mentioned before
it may be necessary
to add some exceptions
for some of your components.
If for some reason your web site is now
completely blank or you have a 500 error,
you should use your ftp program
or your web hosts file manager
to locate the .htaccess file
in the root of your web space.
Rename this file perhaps
to .htacessnew - to prevent
it from working and your web site will reload.
You should then return to Admintools
and the .htaccess maker
and review the settings until
your web site is working perfectly.