Joomla: Remove IDs from URLs for out-of-the-box SEF

Applies to

• Joomla! CMS v3.5.x

What?
This is a short article on how to remove the ID numbers from your Joomla website addresses for search engine friendly URLs.

// What I have
www.joellipman.com/index.php?option=com_content&category_id=4&article_id=123-article-alias

// With URL rewriting enabled
www.joellipman.com/index.php/4-category-alias/123-article-alias.html

// What I want
www.joellipman.com/category-alias/article-alias.html

How?
You could buy an SEF extension that does this for you or spend time tweaking your .htaccess file.  Or you can take advantage of a Joomla update and do this without any coding...

Pre-amble
To allow the Joomla CMS to manage your SEFs you need to setup your htaccess file:

1. Open the root of your Joomla website in your file manager (you can FTP or use web-based clients)
2. Find the file htaccess.txt and rename it to .htaccess

All GUI
Now login to your Joomla Administrator section

1. Browse to System > Global Configuration
2. Click on "Articles" in the left sidebar
3. Under "SEO Settings" set to "Yes" to the options:
   1. Search Engine Friendly URLs
   2. Use URL Rewriting
   3. Add Suffix to URL (optional)
   4. Unicode Aliases (optional - for international languages)
4. Select the "Integration" tab
5. Change the “URL Routing” option from Legacy to Modern
6. A further option will appear called "Remove IDs from URLs, set to "Yes"
7. Click on "Save" and you are done.