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Joomla SEF URL 404 / 'Article not found' After Enabling SEO URLs: Fix

Symptoms: All SEF subpages 404 after enabling SEO/SEF URLs · 'Article not found' or menu items return 404 · Home page works but inner pages don't

Mostly verified. Backed by official Joomla docs + Joomlashack + Apache docs (researched 2026-06-01). Apache-focused. Test on a staging copy first.

You turned on SEO-friendly URLs, and now every page except the home page returns a 404 (“Article not found”, or a 404 on menu items). This is almost always about URL rewriting and the .htaccess file — not your content.

The key setting: “Use URL Rewriting”

In System → Global Configuration → Site → SEO Settings there are two related options:

  • Search Engine Friendly URLs — makes URLs readable.
  • Use URL Rewriting — removes the /index.php/ part. This one requires Apache mod_rewrite (or the IIS equivalent). If your server doesn’t have it, enabling this breaks inner pages.

Fix 1 — Turn “Use URL Rewriting” off

Set Use URL Rewriting to No. Your URLs keep index.php in them, but this is far more tolerant across servers and usually stops the 404s immediately.

Fix 2 — Make sure your .htaccess is actually used

Joomla ships htaccess.txt; you must rename it to .htaccess for rewriting to work. But even then, Apache ignores .htaccess entirely if the server’s config has AllowOverride None for your directory. The directory section needs AllowOverride All (or at least FileInfo). On shared hosting you may need to ask your host to enable this.

Fix 3 — Clear caches after any change

After changing SEF settings, clear the Joomla cache and purge any third-party SEF extension’s cache (e.g. sh404SEF), or you may keep seeing stale 404s.

joomla sef url 404 article not found · joomla 404 after enabling seo · joomla use url rewriting not working · joomla htaccess mod_rewrite 404

Sources