The exentension I always make sure to install on my Joomla websites are:
Kunena (Best forum extension)
uddeIM (Best private message extension)
Extended menu module (Best menu module)
Then something for google webmaster tools and google analytics. I will get back to you on this.
When you activate search engine friendly urls on your Joomla site the article ids tend to be included in the urls even though they are not part of the alias you have defined. This is annoying and there are two solutions:
1) Install a Joomla seo extension that lets you change the urls to your liking.
2) Add the article as a menu item (Article layout) in the menu manager and define the alias to your liking for the particular menu item. This way the article id will be omitted from the url when the article is displayed.
If both yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com are working and you want yourdomain.com to be redirect to www.yourdomain.com, you must add the following two lines to your .htaccess file in the website’s root folder:
rewritecond %{http_host} !^www.yourdomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
On a Joomla site you can normally not redirect the 404 error to a new page using the .htaccess file. Instead you must add a code snippet to the following file /templates/system/error.php (added code in bold):
defined( ‘_JEXEC’ ) or die( ‘Restricted access’ );
if ($this->error->code == 404){
header( ‘Location: enteryoururlhere’ ) ;
exit();
}
?>
On a non joomla site it should be enough to add the following line to the .htaccess file to get the redirect sorted:
ErrorDocument 404 enteryoururlhere
Home