To allow Apache to properly handle the SEF URLs, you need to set up a custom Joomla .htaccess file in the root directory. For the Apache server, the Joomla installation includes a sample .htaccess file that has the proper configuration settings for the main directory to allow Joomla to handle the URL conversion.

The configuration file, named htaccess.txt, will be located at the root directory of your Joomla site in a default installation file. To allow the Joomla execution of mod_rewrite, you will need to rename the file to .htaccess. To enable the htaccess.txt file included with Joomla, rename it to .htaccess (or ht.acl on Windows).

Restart the Apache server so that the file will be correctly addressed.

Note : On the Windows platform, Windows Explorer won't rename a file to an extension without a main filename (which is how the OS will consider the filename .htaccess). You can get around this prohibition by using the command prompt to rename the file, but there is a more elegant solution. You will need to load the httpd.conf file for your Apache server into a text editor and add the following line:

After you've added the line, restart the server. The added directive will allow the .htaccess file to have either the traditional filename or the name ht.acl.

You can examine the .htaccess file to see if any of the special cases listed in the comments section of the file may cause problems on your server. Open the file and you'll see the following setting in the text:

This setting may already be set in another part of the Apache configuration (especially on a remote server). If this setting generates an error when you restart Apache, you may need to add a pound sign (#) to the front of the line to make the directive a comment so that it won't execute.