.htaccess

  • 1&1 SEF URL's problem reloaded

    A while ago I already posted an article about problems getting SEF URL's work on 1&1-s servers and thought I know how to deal with the idiosyncrasies of 1&1's (very unprofessional) server settings. I was wrong...

  • Avoid easy Joomla version detection

    There is a surprisingly easy way to detect your Joomla version - and one don't need sophisticated tools, like BlindElephant or his siblings to do it. And this information can be used by hackers to make you scream...

  • Block unwanted visitors using their IP address on your Joomla site?

    Sometimes you need to block a certain IP address, a group of addresses or certain hosts from accessing your Joomla website. Reasons may include:

    • It's a hacking attempt coming from that IP
    • Someone is scraping content from your website
    • A brute-force attack (in most cases a DoS - Denial of Service - attack is originated from that IP (there are too many requests coming from a particular IP
    • Someone continuously spamming your website
    • Some content from your site (images, media files) are hotlinked from your website.

    The solution is simple, but is advised to apply first other tools to stop these bad guys - overuse of this tip can slow down your site considerably, use it ony if you don't have anything else - or you are in hurry to stop an ongoing attack.

  • Build a New Joomla Website in less than 30min! | Joomla Installation

  • Can't login after moving to new server

    If you search on Google for the term "joomla can't login after moving to new server" - or something similar, you will get more, than 1 million hits for most of the combinations.

    So, you aren't alone. And there are plenty of suggestions, on what might gone wrong and how you might find that, and there are verious fixes. But what if you moved the site to another domain? From development server to it's final place? This is a subject wich is rarely touched by those advices.

  • Change the file and folder permissions automatically

    File and folder permissions are a key part of your Joomla site's security. It's highly recommended that you have set them properly. They should never be 777, but ideal is 644 for files and 755 folders.

  • Customize your Browser Caching for Faster Performance

    In the race to the top of Search Engine result pages - ultimately higher SERP (Search Engine Ranking Points) the site speed is an important factor. There are lots of tricks to increase a Joomla site's speed, here is one wich does not need additional code to be installed and executed, but yet is powerful an let you fine-tune your site's performance.

  • Dynamic vs. Static URLs

    Joomla, as a PHP/MySQL powered solution is inserting the content into a webpage by way of a script. This type of site is considered to be dynamic. The advantage is obvious - that's why you and me have been chosen Joomla Tongue out. But what's the drawback?

  • Enhance your security with .htaccess rules

    One of often overlooked security (and not only) resource for any Joomla site is under your fingertips! With each Joomla install (even from the old Mambo days) you have a file named htaccess.txt in your site's root directory. In most cases is never touched, and left as is - most weekend webmasters don't even know what is for. A few are using it to help Joomla or the specialized SEF URL builders to make those pretty SEF URL's for their site. And that's pretty easy - in most cases it's enough to rename it to .htaccess, and you are set. But there is much more power hidden there...

  • GoDaddy's Joomla blues

    A while ago I wrote a tip about problems geting SEF URL's work on 1&1-s servers. Back then I didn't realized, that the problem is the same - or at least fairly similar - on GoDaddy's servers too. Not everywhere, I have a site running on GoDaddy with sh404SEF without any need of tweaking the .htaccess file, but recently I had issues with another site.

    So, the trick above solves the problem, but what is the cause?

  • How to install Joomla to GoDaddy

    Even if hosting Joomla on GoDaddy can be challenging, and anybody ever built a site on their servers will tell you to turn to some better Joomla host, many people still choose them because of the excellent price/offering ratio. Here are a few tips that will help you get Joomla running on GoDaddy with minimum fuss.

  • How to turn off magic_quotes_gpc on GoDaddy

    With arrival of Joomla 3.* the GoDaddy users are facing a new challenge - how to turn off magic_quotes_gpc. this is usually a simple task, there are many ways to do it.

  • Increase the available memory for your page

    Did you added something to a perfectly working Joomla site, and you suddenly have a blank age instead your site? Chances are that you hit the memory limit allowed to you on your server. Memory limits help to keep scripts from running out of control or using up all of your free memory. This value is generally carefully set by your host's SYSADMIN to let the hosted sites to run smoothly without bottlenecking each other by overusing this precious system resource.

  • Increase your Joomla site's SEO score with sh404SEF

    If you think, that is enough to build a nice site with a great content to have lots of visitors flowing to your site you're wrong. There are millions of webmasters trying to do the same. And Google and other search engines simply can't find, index and sort all of these sites, and show them to your potential visitors. So you need to do a little more to help these search engines - and to help yourself!

  • Leverage browser caching

    One of the most easy ways to make your Joomla website faster is to leverage Joomla browser caching. This is one of the high priority tasks recommended by Google to make your website load faster.

  • MAX_JOIN_SIZE problems

    Recently in more (usually cheap) hosts more of my clients reported a strange error, wich showed up recently, withouth notice.

    The error message is like this:

    1104 The SELECT would examine more than MAX_JOIN_SIZE rows; check your WHERE and use SET SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1 or SET SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE=# if the SELECT is okay

    followed by the failing query.

  • Moving the location of admin login

    Most of attacks on the web - and Joomla sites aren't an exception - are made fully or in first phase at least by automated robots. These are using known entrance points as administrator logins to most used software solutions to try they chances to break in. So it's a wise move to change these well known locations. But wait! The need to upgrade compatibility may made this difficult, so, how we can do this without changing a line in Joomla code?

  • Never-ending database installation

    If you’ve been trying to install a quickstart package received after a template purchase, and the installation freezes at the database creation/restoration step you might have to make few changes in the server/PHP environment in order to fix the issue.

  • No Input File Specified error on GoDaddy

    GoDaddy is notoriously buggy when comes to Joomla hosting. But when you turn on SEF, you might have another nasty surprise, instead of your site's pages you might see this:

    No Input File Specified
  • PHP Warning: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings....

    With recent upgrade of a great number of servers to PHP 5.3.8 may clients reported that their site began to show error messages like

    Warning: strtotime() [function.strtotime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings

    or

    Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings

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