SEF Broken after moving to a new server

Hello,

I have just finished preparing a new server for our Joomla site.  The site was shifted using JoomlaCloner and all seems to have moved properly.  With SEO off, everything works. 

As SEF Advance will only work with our domain, to test that it also works I created a hosts file entry to redirect requests to our SEF Advance registered domain so that they are directed to the new server. 

When I turn SEO on, none of the existing SEF URLs work.  I get a 404 message.  I have tripple checked that I have the correct .htaccess file and that mod_rewrite is installed.

The SEF Advance configuration seems to be still there but none of the redirects are working.

Please assist.

Thanks
Chris

I don't understand. Can you give example URL? Does the built-in SEF work?
If it doesn't then .htaccess and/or mod_rewrite are faulty, if it does you didn't replaced .htaccess with the one included in SEF Advance zip file.

Hello and thank you for the prompt responce,

The server is publically available at 82.133.27.78/ .  You will need to create a hosts entry that redefines this address as www.auctioning4u.co.uk .

.htaccess is exactly the same as on our existing live site ( www.auctioning4u.co.uk ) as are the rest of the html pages.

As a test.  I have uninstalled and then reinstalled SEFAdvance (newest version).  Copied over the .htaccess file from the rar package and tried again.  Still not working.  Something seems to be generating SEF URLs but they are not working.  I have also tried turning on debug support but I do not see any output.

I have not defined any new Aliases but I think that the default ones should work.

This is a URL that does not work: ' www.auctioning4u.co.uk/content/how-it-works/business-sellers/ ' which is directly from the site's top level menu.

I have turned SEO (Search Engine Friendly URLs:) on and disabled SEFAdvance on the configuration page.  If this is all I have to do to test built-in SEF teh built-in SEF seems to be broken?  Is there something else that I can do to test?

What I find really strange is that all this works on the live site.  There must be a file that JoomlaCloner did not move.

Thanks agan for the help
Chris

It seems that built-in SEF doesn't work either on your new server which means your server either ignore .htaccess or your mod_rewrite doesn't work. Please contact your host about that.

I am self hosting.

Perhaps there is an Apache setting that affects the way .htaccess works.

I will do some research and let you know how I do.

Thanks
Chris

Hello,

I have resolved the problem and thought that I should post for anyone else who has this issue.

The following _link_:

www.tildemark.com/software/servers/enabl...ccess-on-apache.html

Contains the following instructions for dealing with the problem:

.htaccess files allows us to change configurations on our servers per directory or subdirectory. we may enable htaccess files by editing our httpd.conf rewmoving the comment on line from

;LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

to

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

we need to change the AllowOverride directive also from

Options FollowSym_link_s
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Satisfy all

to

Options FollowSym_link_s
AllowOverride All
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Satisfy all

You can also rename your .htaccess file by adding the line below on you httpd.conf file

AccessFileName [filename]

example: AccessFileName .configuration

Regards
Chris