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• Last Updated: 01/31/2020
• ( 12 minutes reading )

How to configure Site Settings in Joomla

Introduction

Since you have already installed Joomla, it is time to configure the main settings of your website. In this tutorial, we will cover the first part of configuring Joomla’s Global Settings. In the following lines, you will learn how to customize your Site settings, Search Engine friendly URLs, Metadata Information, and Cookie Settings.

 

Accessing the Global Configuration page

For a start, please log in to your Joomla Admin Dashboard. Once you are in, navigate through the top menu bar to System > Global Configuration.

 

Accessing the Global Configuration page

 

As the name suggests, the “Global Configuration” page is where you, as a site administrator, will be able to maintain the general settings applicable to the global configuration of your Joomla website.

 

Site settings tab

 

As we previously pointed out our focus in this tutorial will be on the first “Site” tab.

 

Configuring Site Settings

Now that you have accessed the “Site” tab, you will notice it is split into a few sections containing specific site settings. We will review each of them and explain everything in detail to ensure you understand what exactly they do control and affect.

Let’s start with the first “Site Settings” section. The settings located under it will allow you to control the operation of your backend and frontend pages.

  • Site Name - In this field, you will need to enter the title of your website which will be used in several places, such as the admin area browser title bar, offline pages, etc.
  • Site Offline - You can think of that as an Under Construction mode. If you enable it, your website frontend will display a “Site is offline” message to anyone who attempts to access it.
  • Inline Editing - This setting determines which parts of your website you will be able to edit directly from the frontend. You can choose between “Modules”, “Modules & Menus” and “None”. Note that the ability to edit your modules from the frontend will certainly save you a lot of time and effort.
  • Default Editor - Pretty self-explanatory, this setting determines the editor used for creating or updating your website content. You can choose between “TinyMCE”, “CodeMirror” and “None” where you will need to directly edit the HTML code. Note that these editors are pre-installed with Joomla. If you have installed additional editors (as Joomla extensions) they will be as well listed in the dropdown of options.
  • Default Captcha - From this dropdown menu you will be able to select the Captcha type which will be used on your website pages. Please note that the desired Captcha needs to be first installed as a Joomla extension.
  • Default Access Level - This setting determines the access level provided for newly published content on your website. By default, it is set to “Public” which means it will be visible by all site visitors. If for some reason, you would like to restrict certain groups, please select the appropriate option. Note that when submitting new content you will be able to override this selection.
  • Default List Limit - This setting determines the maximum number of items listed in your Joomla Admin area pages. The value chosen here will be pre-select on the page, however, you will be able to change it on the page itself if needed.
  • Default Feed Limit - This setting determines the number of content articles displayed in the news feeds of your Joomla website.
  • Feed Email Address - The news feeds content generated by your Joomla site may include an email address as part of the author’s identity. This setting determines the source for that email address. The “Site Email” will acquire the “From email” address set up in the Global Configuration (“Server” tab), the “Author Email” will use the address defined for the site content writer.

 

Configuring Site settings

 

Next, we will review the “Metadata Settings” located right below. In this section, you will be able to specify your Metadata Information which is generally used by search engines. This information will affect the optimization of your website and your ranking in search results.

  • Site Meta Description - This is the global meta description of your website. It will be applied to all site pages and it will be used by search engines to determine what the website is about. Therefore, it is recommended to include all the keywords applicable to your web content in order to get better ranking results. If no information is defined here, it will be obtained from the web pages.
  • Site Meta Keywords - In this field, you need to enter all the keywords and phrases related to your website. They will be used by search engines to determine what the website is about. Please make sure to separate them with commas  (,) while you are entering them. If no information is defined here, it will be obtained from the webpages.
  • Robots - Controls if your website will be indexed and crawled by search engines. Where “Index” means that you allow search engines to index the content of your web pages and “Follow” means that you allow search engines to follow and crawl the links of the website. The “No Follow/No Crawl” option will restrict the actions described above.
  • Content Rights - In this field, you will need to specify the content “rights” metadata entry. Put in simple words, this indicates the rights others have over the site content. If no information is defined here, it will be obtained from the webpages.
  • Show Author Meta Tag - When this setting is enabled, it will include an “author” metadata entry (containing the author name) to the page header.
  • Show Joomla Version - Controls whether the application version is displayed.

 

Configuring Metadata Settings

 

On the right side of the page, you will see the “SEO Settings” and the “Cookie Settings” sections.

In the first “SEO Settings” section you will be able to configure your SE-friendly URLs. SE- friendly URLs are considered a significant ranking factor. They are also easily readable by visitors and more user-friendly.

  • Search Engine Friendly URLs - This setting determines whether the use of SEO-friendly URLs is enabled or disabled on your Joomla website. An example of an SEO-friendly URL is “http://hostarmadatutorials.com/index.php/getting-started/” where the standard URL is “www.hostarmadatutorials.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=437”
  • Use URL Rewriting - This setting determines if the server rewrite engine will be used to rewrite URLs. Simply put, enabling this option will omit the “index.php” filename from your website URLs (i.e. “http://yourdomain.com” instead of “http://yourdomain.com/index.php”).
  • Add Suffix to URL - This setting determines whether suffix based on the document type will be added to URLs. For example, if it is enabled the URL will appear as “http://hostarmadatutorials.com/index.php/getting-started.html” while if it is disabled it will exclude the “.html” suffix. It is recommended to keep it disabled, as it may cause certain user confusion when entering the URL address.
  • Unicode Aliases - This setting allows you to choose between “Transliteration” (No) and “Unicode” (Yes) aliases. Simply put, if it is disabled non-Latin characters will be automatically converted into Latin wherever appropriate (e.g. in URLs). If enabled, the non-Latin characters will remain as they are. Please note that regardless of your selection your formerly created content will not be affected.
  • Site Name in Page Titles - This setting allows you to set your “Site Name” (which we reviewed above) as Beginning or Ending page title on all your pages.

The last “Cookie Settings” section is where you will be able to control and modify your site cookies.

  • Cookie Domain - This setting allows you to specify a domain name for the session cookies which will override the default cookie domain. Including a period (.) in front of the domain (i.e. “.domain.com") will cover all subdomains associated with this domain name.
  • Cookie Path - This setting allows you to specify a custom path for a directory where the cookie should be valid by overriding the default cookie path.

 

Configuring SEO and Cookie Settings

 

This is it! To wrap up, you have covered the configuration of your Joomla Site, Metadata, SEO, and Cookie settings. We hope you have found the information provided in this guide useful and our instructions easy to follow. In case you have any additional questions, please feel free to address them to our Support Team.

 

 

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Sebahat
Content Marketing Specialist

Sebahat is a young and bright woman who has become an invaluable part of our team. She started as a Customer Care Representative, mastering that role and, along the way, growing into a tech-savvy individual who is well acquainted with every support layer of the company. Driven by her aim to improve our customers’ experience constantly, she is committed to enhancing the extraordinary support we deliver.