PHPnet.org is a non-profit hosting association for PHP developers. Due to their hosting parameters, Mambo's "Search Engine Friendly URLs" won't work out of the box. Here is how to set up the .htaccess for Mambo CMS/Joomla on these hosts.

Using the default parameters, Mambo or Joomla set up on a PHPnet.org hosting only allows access to the front page. Any other URL returns You are not authorized to view this resource. You need to login.

Guided by a previous post on the 4.5.1 forum at mamboserver and additional info gleaned here and there, I found how the .htaccess has to be set up on this shared hosting provider. Without these changes, I had the same errors as other users on other hosting solutions.

On PHPnet.org, the .htaccess *must* be renamed htaccess.fi instead of .htaccess. Additional clauses have to be added as follows.

For a domain, say, www.example.com :

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /home/users/e/example/www
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*) /index.php

Where:

• e is the first letter of the domain left part
• example is the domain left part
• www is the subdomain

The rewrite rule needs the / before index.php.

Tagged for mambo, joomla, seo, and sef in Technorati.