The .htaccess file is used for friendly urls. By default, friendly urls are disabled in Admin -> Settings. If you turn them on, you will need to rename your htaccess_default.php file to .htaccess and edit it as shown below. The .htaccess file can be quite daunting to look at, but we can make it much easier on the eye by focusing only on the section that needs editing: Code: ############################# ##### EDIT THIS SECTION ##### ############################# ##### Re-directing Begin ##### Options +Indexes +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on ## If Hotaru is installed in a subfolder, change the below line to RewriteBase /name-of-subfolder RewriteBase / ## If installed in a subfolder you may need to add ## to the beginning of the next line RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/ ## Remove these two lines if you have a sub-domain like http://bookmarking.myhotarusite.com or http://localhost ## Keep if your site url looks like http://www.myhotarusite.com RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^\/?(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] ##### Re-directing End ##### Let's make it less verbose by stripping out the commented parts in these common examples: Example 1: http://www.mysite.com Code: Options +Indexes +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^\/?(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] Example 2: http://mysite.com/hotaru Code: Options +Indexes +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on RewriteBase /hotaru ## RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/ ## RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. ## RewriteRule ^\/?(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] Example 3: http://hotaru.mysite.com I think this should be the same as Example 2, but I'll wait for someone to PM me or another moderator with confirmation before we put it here.