Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. How to force Wordpress to remove trailing slashes?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How to force Wordpress to remove trailing slashes?

    Technical SEO
    6
    9
    45432
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • james-tb
      james-tb last edited by

      I've searched around quite a bit for a solution here, but I can't find anything. I apologize if this is too technical for the forum.

      I have a Wordpress site hosted on Nginx by WP Engine. Currently it resolves requests to URLs either with or without a trailing slash.

      So, both of these URLs are functional:

      <code>mysite.com/single-post</code>
      

      and

      <code>mysite.com/single-post/</code>
      

      I would like to remove the trailing slash from all posts, forcing mysite.com/single-post/ to redirect to mysite.com/single-post. I created a redirect rule on the server:

      ^/(.*)/$ -> /$1

      and this worked well for end-users, but rendered the admin panel inaccessible. Somewhere, Wordpress is adding a trailing slash back on to the URL mysite.com/wp-admin, resulting in a redirect loop. I can't see anything obvious in .htaccess.

      Where is this rule adding a trailing slash to 'wp-admin' established?

      Thanks very much

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BlueprintMarketing
        BlueprintMarketing last edited by

        WPEis run on a base server using Apache with a Nginx proxy so you can use the WP engine  301 redirect system built-in or you can simply add a redirect to the HTAccess file. If you would like to use a tool to do this I recommend this one another alternative is to ask WP engine to make a change for you.https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/non-slash-vs-slash-urls/ApacheJust copy to your htaccess:```
        https://example.com/page/

        **https://example.com/page** 
        ``` 
        <label for="nonslash">**Slash to Non-Slash URLs**</label>
        
        > <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
        > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        > RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule>
        
        **Non-Slash to Slash URLs**
        
        ```
        ****Apache**
        https://example.com/page**
        

        https://example.com/page/

        
        > <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
        > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        > RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])$ /$1/ [L,R=301]</ifmodule>
        
        

        USEING Nginx to do

        **https://example.com/page/**
        

        https://example.com/page

        
        As you see, there is one tiny difference between those two URLs, and it’s the trailing slash at the end. In order to avoid duplicate content, if you are using Nginx you can **remove the trailing slash from Nginx** URLs.
        
        Place this inside your virtual host file in the server {} block configuration:
        
        > ```
        > rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;
        > ```
        
        Full example:
        
        > ```
        > server {
        > listen 80;
        > server_name www.mysite.com;
        > rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;
        > }
        > ```
        
        All done, now Nginx will remove all those trailing slashes.
        
        

        USEING Nginx to do
        https://example.com/page
        https://example.com/page/

        
        Add a trailing slash by placing this inside your virtual host file in the server {} block configuration:
        
        > ```
        > rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ permanent;
        > ```
        
        Full example:
        
        > ```
        > server {
        > listen 80;
        > server_name www.mysite.com;
        > rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ permanent;
        > }
        > ```
        
        From now on, Nginx should add your trailing slash automatically to every url
        
        *   https://www.scalescale.com/tips/nginx/add-trailing-slash-nginx/
        *   https://www.scalescale.com/tips/nginx/nginx-remove-trailing-slash/
        
         I hope this helps,
        
        Tom
        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ATP
          ATP last edited by

          Hi John, sorry ive been on leave so not checked back on the  forums.

          Glad it looks like its working for you. I dont think the comments do anything except signify where word press has begun writing to the .htaccess (i dont run wordpress so can't be sure). Normally comments do nothing but signify something useful to the user.

          I can try to breakdown the code a little for you, but my htaccess isn't fantastic so its by no means complete.

          Firstline:  RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d

          RewriteCond% = This says use this condition if....
          {REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d =  ... is NOT a directory

          RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]
          I believe this bit takes a snapshot of the url upto the final / then rewrites it to that snapshot.

          The combination of these must mean it doesn't affect your wordpress admin directory. I know this code can break if your install is within a directory (as is discussed in the stackover flow link) but they have provided a solution for that in that topic. I would say test if on your live website to make complete sure it will work as this may be slightly different to your local install. Have a back-up ready just incase it doesn't.

          Make sure you check every url including

          Homepage
          Pages
          Posts
          Category Pages
          Sub Category Pages
          Post Pages
          Any images or files

          To make sure it is working as expected on all of them.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • james-tb
            james-tb last edited by

            Thanks so much, ATP! It looks like writing the condition into .htaccess does the trick—at least for my local install. Is this because the commands located within the

            BEGIN WordPress

            END WordPress

            comments only apply to URLs outside of the WP admin area?

            Thanks again, ATP—that was a very thorough and helpful response!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • evolvingSEO
              evolvingSEO last edited by

              Hi John

              Did ATP's solution help you out? Let us know if we can look into this further!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • ATP
                ATP last edited by

                Hi John,

                I asked something similar myself something myself but im on the Magento platform. This should matter as the solution wasn't platform specific. It just involved editing htaccess file. If your up for editing your .htacccess file then it could be of some use. The topic URL is below and it contains multiple solutions for editing and removing the / and the debugging process we went through along the way. (Courtesy of Andy and Dirk) Hopefully its of some use to you

                https://moz.com/community/q/cms-pages-multiple-urls

                SUMMARY:
                If you know how to edit your .htaccess and your ready to dive straight in this code should do it.

                RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
                RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

                If you want the page with explanations and walk-through please see the original topic as editing your htaccess  badly can cause all sorts of errors.

                Edit: I realised i was probably a tiny bit lazy and should of probably included this link which is the original link i got sent from stackoverflow with instructions on how to to edit your .htaccess file.

                http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21417263/htaccess-add-remove-trailing-slash-from-url

                Dirks answer later in the post offer guidance on applying it to certain parameters which should prove helpful if your still having loop problems with the admin page.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • james-tb
                  james-tb last edited by

                  Thanks for the replies, Donna, Martijn. I am running Yoast and considered adding the trailing slash, but:

                  -Most of the inbound links we have are to URLs with no slash

                  -The slash style seems a little dated in general-few sites use them these days.

                  I'd really love to just figure out how to solve the issue a little closer to the root.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                    Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                    Hi John,

                    It seems obvious, but why not go for a adding a trailing slash to every URL instead or removing it, would solve your issues at least.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • DonnaDuncan
                      DonnaDuncan last edited by

                      Are you using the yoast SEO plugin? There is a setting under Advanced > Permalinks that forces a trailing slash onto URLs. I'd try looking at that first.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • Colemckeon

                        If I get spammy backlinks removed is it still necessary to disavow?

                        Now there is some conflicting beliefs here and I want to know what you think. If I got a high spam website to remove my backlink, is a disavow through search console still necessary ? Keep in mind if it helps even in the slightest to improve rankings im for it!

                        Technical SEO | | Colemckeon
                        1
                      • Dreamrealemedia

                        Move a Wordpress Site to HTTPS with Bluehost

                        HI Guys, do you think that the following guide is enoght to move a bluehost wordpress site to https in a seo best practive way? https://www.shoutmeloud.com/free-ssl-certificate-bluehost-hosting.html Basically their steps are: Install SSL on Bluehost panel Install Really Simple SSL Wp Plugin Edit Your .htacess File & Add The Code For HTTP To HTTPS Redirection Update All HTTP URLs In Database To HTTPS Using Search and Replace Plugin Use Broken Link Checker plugin & use its redirection module to find links to 3rd party sites with HTTP that should now be HTTPS. Last thing to do Submit your new HTTPS site to Google Search Console & submit your sitemap. Update your profile link on Google Analytics. Update your website links on social media profiles & anywhere else they exist. This step you can do in pieces in the coming days. Read this guide to learn more about HTTP to HTTPS migration & fixing mixed content. If you disabled Who.Is guard for your domain name, you can enable it now. Do you know a better practical guide for wordrpess? in term of usefull plugins to handle the migration? Tx to everyone!

                        Technical SEO | | Dreamrealemedia
                        0
                      • MarketHubb

                        Help Setting Up 301 Redirects from Coldfusion Site to Wordpress Site.

                        I have created a new website and need to redirect all of the previous pages to the new one. The old website was built in coldfusion and the new site is built in wordpress. One of the pages I'm trying to redirect is www.norriseal.com/products.cfm to http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/. This is what I have in my .htaccess file <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymlinks
                        RewriteEngine On
                        RewriteBase /
                        Redirect 301 /products.cfm http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/</ifmodule> The result of this redirect is http://norrisealwellmark.com/products.cfm How do I prevent the .cfm from appending to the destination URL?

                        Technical SEO | | MarketHubb
                        1
                      • allstatetransmission

                        Removing images from site and Image Sitemap SEO advice

                        Hello again, I have received an update request where they want me to remove images from this site (as of now its a bunch of thumbnails) current page design: http://1stimpressions.com/portfolio/car-wraps/ and turn it into a new design which utilized a slider (such as this): http://1stimpressions.com/portfolio/ They don't want the thumbnails on the page anymore. My question is since my site has a image sitemap that has been indexed will removing all the images hurt my SEO greatly? What would the recommended steps to take to reduce any SEO damage be, if so? Thank you again for your help, always great and very helpful feedback! 🙂 cheers!

                        Technical SEO | | allstatetransmission
                        0
                      • M_D_Golden_Peak

                        How to Remove /feed URLs from Google's Index

                        Hey everyone, I have an issue with RSS /feed URLs being indexed by Google for some of our Wordpress sites. Have a look at this Google query, and click to show omitted search results. You'll see we have 500+ /feed URLs indexed by Google, for our many category pages/etc. Here is one of the example URLs: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/fonts-typography/letterforms/attachment/gilhelveticatrade/feed/. Based on this content/code of the XML page, it looks like Wordpress is generating these: <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2</generator> Any idea how to get them out of Google's index without 301 redirecting them? We need the Wordpress-generated RSS feeds to work for various uses. My first two thoughts are trying to work with our Development team to see if we can get a "noindex" meta robots tag on the pages, by they are dynamically-generated pages...so I'm not sure if that will be possible. Or, perhaps we can add a "feed" paramater to GWT "URL Parameters" section...but I don't want to limit Google from crawling these again...I figure I need Google to crawl them and see some code that says to get the pages out of their index...and THEN not crawl the pages anymore. I don't think the "Remove URL" feature in GWT will work, since that tool only removes URLs from the search results, not the actual Google index. FWIW, this site is using the Yoast plugin. We set every page type to "noindex" except for the homepage, Posts, Pages and Categories. We have other sites on Yoast that do not have any /feed URLs indexed by Google at all. Side note, the /robots.txt file was previously blocking crawling of the /feed URLs on this site, which is why you'll see that note in the Google SERPs when you click on the query link given in the first paragraph.

                        Technical SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak
                        0
                      • ulefos

                        Remove html file extension and 301 redirects

                        Hi Recently I ask for some work done on my website from a company,  but I am not sure what they've done is right.
                        What I wanted was html file extensions to be removed like
                        /ash-logs.html to /ash-logs
                        also the index.html to www.timports.co.uk
                        I have done a crawl diagnostics and have duplicate page content and 32 page title duplicates. This is so doing my head in please help This is what is in the .htaccess file <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed on
                        ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache,combine_css, collapse_whitespace,move_css_to_head, remove_comments</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.html RewriteEngine On 
                         # Rewrite valid requests on .html files  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html?rw=1 [L,QSA] 
                         # Return 404 on direct requests against .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .html$  
                        RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !rw=1 [NC]
                         RewriteRule ^ - [R=404] AddCharset UTF-8 .html # <filesmatch “.(js|css|html|htm|php|xml|swf|flv|ashx)$”="">#SetOutputFilter DEFLATE #</filesmatch> <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
                        ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 years"
                        ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 years"</ifmodule> <files 403.shtml="">order allow,deny allow from all</files> redirect 301 /PRODUCTS http://www.timports.co.uk/kiln-dried-logs
                        redirect 301 /kindling_firewood.html http://www.timports.co.uk/kindling-firewood.html
                        redirect 301 /about_us.html http://www.timports.co.uk/about-us.html
                        redirect 301 /log_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/log-delivery.html redirect 301 /oak_boards_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/oak-boards-delivery.html
                        redirect 301 /un_edged_oak_boards.html http://www.timports.co.uk/un-edged-oak-boards.html
                        redirect 301 /wholesale_logs.html http://www.timports.co.uk/wholesale-logs.html redirect 301 /privacy_policy.html http://www.timports.co.uk/privacy-policy.html redirect 301 /payment_failed.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-failed.html redirect 301 /payment_info.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-info.html

                        Technical SEO | | ulefos
                        1
                      • AndrewAkesson

                        Web config redirects not working where a trailing slash is involved

                        I'm having real trouble with getting working redirects in place to use on a site we're re-launching with a modified url structure. Old URL: http://www.example.com/example_folder/ New URL: http://www.example.com/example-of-new-folder/ Now, where the old URL's have a trailing slash the web.config simply will not accept it. It says the URL can start with a slash, but not end with a slash. However, many of my URL's do end with a slash so I need a workaround. These are the rules I'm putting in place: <location path="example_folder/"></location> Thanks

                        Technical SEO | | AndrewAkesson
                        0
                      • anand2010

                        How to remove a sub domain from Google Index!

                        Hello, I have a website having many subdomains having same copy of content i think its harming my SEO for that site since abc and xyz sub domains do have same contents. Thus i require to know i have already deleted required subdomain DNS RECORDS now how to have those pages removed from Google index as  well ? The DNS Records no more exists for those subdomains already.

                        Technical SEO | | anand2010
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.