If you’re using the latest version of Joomla (version 3.8+) you might have noticed that some of the URLs on your website may have numbers in them.
So instead of looking like this:-
www.mywebsite.com.au/my-great-blog-post
They look a little like this:-
www.mywebsite.com.au/248-my-great-blog-post
And no matter how much you change the alias in the article or menu, that number still keeps appearing in your URLs.
There are a few ways you can remove the numbers from your URLs in Joomla and if you have a third party SEF management tool like SH404SEF you will probably find that the numbers aren’t an issue. If however, you’ve got a Joomla website and you’ve got numbers in your alias (also called URL string) that you would like to remove it’s actually a very simple process.
How to remove the numbers from your URLs in Joomla
There’s a hidden gem within Joomla that enables you to turn off the numbers in your URLs with just a few clicks. Here’s how:-
- Login into your Joomla administrator area
- Go to Content / Articles
- Click on the Options button on the right of the screen
- Click the Integration tab
- Change the ‘URL Routing’ option to Modern
- Change ‘Remove IDs from URLs’ from No to Yes
That’s it! Easy peasy. The numbers in your URLs should now be all but gone!
Note: Don’t forget to re-submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools so they crawl all your new pages.