Global Template Preferences¶

Enable Template Routes¶

This setting toggles whether or not Template Routes are used. If this is set to no, templates will not be accesible by their routes. When disabled the Template Route options will not appear in the Template Manager.

Strict URLs¶

This setting determines whether or not ExpressionEngine allows Templates from your default Template Group to be directly accessed in the first URL segment. Enabling Strict URLs requires that the first URL segment be a valid Template Group only, or a 404 page is shown.

If you wish to extend this to the second segment, requiring a valid template, then in your “index” template of your Template Group(s) that you wish to do this, you can take advantage of the {redirect=} global variable like so:

{if segment_2 != ''}   {redirect="404"} {/if}

Our official recommendation is that users enable Strict URLs, as doing so makes the path to your content more precise, allows more relevant 404 pages, and does not allow your content to be shown with variances in the URL structure. However, for legacy reasons, Strict URLs are disabled by default.

404 Page¶

This determines which template should be displayed when someone tries to access an invalid URL. If you choose “None”, a standard 404 message and server header will be shown.

Please note that ExpressionEngine only validates the first two segments of your URLs when determining whether to show a 404 page, since these segments will correlate to a Template Group and Template name (which represent your site’s “pages”). Anything beyond the first two segments can not be used to show a 404 page (with one notable exception, using the require_entry= parameter).

For an explanation regarding how ExpressionEngine interprets your URLs, please see URL Structure page.

Save Template Revisions¶

If this preference is set to “Yes”, then any changes you make to one of your Templates will be saved. This allows you to keep a record of all changes made so that you can easily revert back to an earlier version of a Template if you need to do so.

Maximum Number of Revisions to Keep¶

The maximum number of revisions that should be kept for each template. For example, if you set this to 5, only the most recent 5 revisions will be saved for any given template. This setting helps ensure that your database does not get too large due to storing Template revisions.

Save templates as files¶

This determines whether your Templates are saved to files in addition to the datbase, allowing easy editing via the editor of your choice. See Saving Templates as Text Files for more information.

Server path to site’s templates¶

This is the server path (not URL) to the folder that holds the Template files. A server path often looks similar to:

/home/usr/domain.com/system/expressionengine/templates/

Server paths will vary from server to server, so you should contact your Host or server admin if you are unsure of what your setting should be.

See Saving Templates as Text Files for more information.