These pages describe how to manage the configuration of your Joomla! website by manipulating files such as configuration.php, htaccess.txt, and robots.txt.

Global Configuration

You can easily modify values for variables defined in the configuration.php file by using the Global Configuration form found in the Joomla! back end.  You can also use the Global Configuration form to manage logging, text filtering, and permissions. 

Site Offline

You can take your Joomla! website offline using the Global Configuration form.  This will result in all visitors seeing an offline message with a login form. 

SMTP mail and Gmail

You can use the Global Configuration form to change the mail delivery agent from the default of PHP Mail to SMTP.  To configure SMTP mail, you will need the settings for your outgoing mail host.  This page also describes how to use GMail as your SMTP mail host, and how to debug mail delivery problems.

The htaccess.txt file

This page presents an overview of the htaccess.txt file included with Joomla!.  This file is used to configure Apache web server options for your Joomla! website.  This file is normally renamed to .htaccess in order to implement Search Engine Optimisation on your website. 

The robots.txt file

This page presents an overview of the robots.txt file included with Joomla!. This file defines which parts of the site should not be inspected by specific robot user agents, such as crawlers or spiders.

Adding www to a URL

Learn how to add regular expressions to your .htaccess file so that "www." is prepended to the URL of your website. 

Disallow Image Hotlinking

Learn how to add code to your .htaccess file to prevent other websites from linking to images on your website. 

Disallow Directory Listing

Learn how the .htaccess file prevents visitors from accessing a list of all files and sub-directories in your Joomla! website directory, thereby improving the security of your website. 

Password Protect Directories

You can create an .htaccess file that password-protects a directory (or your entire website) from public access.  Note that this method does not meet rigorously defined definitions of security, and should therefore not be used for anything requiring real security.