In order to give your Joomla site a clean URL that makes it user friendly as well as Search Engine Optimized, you need to change the "htaccess.txt" file, and simply rename it to ".htaccess".

What is the htaccess.txt file?
It is part of the Joomla core download. You can find it in the root folder of your Joomla site.

How to change the file:
1)Login to your Joomla site backend via FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
2)Locate the Joomla Site root folder ie(httpdocs)
3)Locate the "htaccess.txt" file
3)Rename the file to ".htaccess"
4)Login to Joomla backend, and click on "Site" from the menu and go to "Global Configuration".
5)Under the "Site" tab in the "Global Configuration" change the "Use Apache mod_rewrite" to YES
6)Confirm both the "Search Engine Friendly URLs" & "Use Apache mod_rewrite" are set to yes and SAVE





Now your URL's should read clean (http://www.yoursite.com/information.html) instead of the previous (http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/information.html)

Did you know that you can make your Joomla site more Search Engine Friendly? Simply click on:

Site >> Global Configuration >> SEO Settings

Below this section you see "Search Engine Friendly URLs" simply click "yes" as often if defaults to no.

What does this do, and what does it mean for you?
It changes the URL from;

www.test.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=27
to
www.test.com/overview.html

This makes the site much easier to navigate back too, especially if the user is manually inputting the site. As well it makes it easier for search engines to index a URL like this. Next time we will talk about Meta Tags in Joomla and how they help with search engines as well!