SEO fails with 404; .htaccess is blank, cannot be deleted etc

[kalpax]

I have joomla 1.08 on a webhost server and can't get SEO to work. On the same webserver, different domain, I have joomla 1.07 working with SEO, on linux/apache, it was simple to set up.

I probably fouled this up by installing OpenSEF before I'd enabled j's internal SEO, but I don't know. I've since uninstalled OpenSEF but hasn't helped.

There are several strange things here.

.htaccess exists but is empty. I'm unable to delete it via joomlaxplorer or the webhosts's file browser software.

If I paste the text from a htaccess.txt into .htaccess, immediate 404 errors result.

I can't turn SEF on in the j control panel because it's 404 after altering .htaccess.

I'm only able to edit the .htaccess file via a special form on the webhost control panel, is this normal?.

I can't find a way out of this, if someone could help that would be great.

[toubkal]

I would ask the web host

Many webhosts either do not allow .htaccess control at all or they limit what you are able to do within them

I had to move hosts for one site because the client's host would only allow .htaccess to be used for password securing folders

It is odd that you have one site ok though.

Talk to your host

[kalpax]

Thanks. But my webhost does allow me to edit the .htaccess. I just can't paste the data in there without it busting everything.

Also they have already allowed apache to rewrite etc else other site wouldn't be SEO ok.

When one first installs j and turns on seo, it does nothing to .htaccess, right? You're supposed to then rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess. So, I wonder how I got a blank .htaccess, since I didn't create manually? Or do most apache websites start life with a blank .htaccess file? If so, the instructions for j seo might say "replace your .htaccess with one created by renaming htaccess.txt"?

[dhuelsmann]

Do you have FTP access to your site? If so you ought to be able to simply upload a new htaccess and overwrite the existing one. I use WS_FTP.

Regards

Dave

[kalpax]

I do have ftp access to the site. I put up the .htaccess file and got the 404-403 errors. Then I removed the .htaccess file. Now I'm locked out, nothing gets me anything other than 404-403. I've emailed the webhost but I sure don't understand this.

[kalpax]

I'm still completely locked out of the site. I've replaced .htaccess, removed it, nothing fixes.

I realize now that the site that uses seo on this server is 1.07, wehre the new site is 1.08. I could never get 1.08 seo to work locally either (winxp + xampp). Is there a general issue with 1.08 and seo?

[dhuelsmann]

There is no issue with seo and 1.08. There was an htaccess file distrubuted with 1.08 and labelled htaccess.txt-dist, I believe. If you have that one, I would recommend you place that one as your active htaccess. Also, you can go into you configuration.php and disable seo by changing $mosConfig_sef = '1'; to $mosConfig_sef = '0';

Regards

Dave

[kalpax]

ISP had to adjust something, solved, thanks!

[kenmcd]

Installing OpenSEF would certainly not be the issue.

ALWAYS get Joomla core SEF working first.
If standard Joomla core SEF does not work, OpenSEF will not work.