A specific guide detailing how to enable search engine friendly URL’s in Magento, and how to troubleshoot problems that may arise when enabling this feature.

How to Enable SEO URL’s in Magento

I often get asked questions related to errors when trying to enable Magento’s search engine friendly URL’s. This will teach you how to both enable the feature in Magento and troubleshoot the most common error that occurs in Magento installs.

Enable SEO Friendly URL’s

Login to your Magento administrator back-end

Navigate to System->Configuration->Web->Search Engine Optimization

Switch to Yes and save.

Flush The Magento Cache

Goto System->Cache Management

Refresh the catalog rewrites

Goto All Cache and change drop down to Refresh.

Click save

On most server, this should take out the index.php in your URL’s.

If you are getting a 404 error, continue reading.

Fixing Mod_Rewrite Errors

I’m Getting A 404 Cannot Find Page Error!

The most common cause for this is that you have an incorrect .htaccess file in your ftp.

Goto the magentocommerce.com site and download the magento files again.

Extract the files, and ONLY upload the .htaccess file to your Magento root directory.

This should fix any problems related to enabling the use of web server rewrites in Magento.