Remove .html and .php extensions with .htaccess

Question

How do I remove the file type from my webpages without creating a new directory and naming the file index.php. I want http://example.com/google.html to http://example.com/go

Answer 1

Yes, I know that this question was asked multiple times already and is answered, but I will give a little more comprehensive answer based on my experience.

Here is the .htaccess code snippet that will help you:

# Apache Rewrite Rules
 
  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /

# Add trailing slash to url
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/|#(.*))$
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1/ [R=301,L]

# Remove .php-extension from url
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
  RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)/$ $1.php 

# End of Apache Rewrite Rules
 

I want to stress some important things here for everybody's reference:

• This code snippet doesn't remove entry scripts from url (such as index.php used by many PHP frameworks)
• It only removes .php extension, if you want to remove other extension as well (e.g. .html), copy and paste 3rd block and replace php with other extension.
• Don't forget to also remove extension from anchors (links) href.