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.
6 .htaccess Rewrites: Remove index.html, Remove .html, Force non-www, Force Trailing Slash
-
i've to give some information about my website Environment
1. i have static webpage in the root.
2. Wordpress installed in sub-dictionary www.domain.com/blog/
3. I have two .htaccess , one in the root and one in the wordpress
folder.i want to
- www to non on all URLs
- Remove index.html from url
- Remove all .html extension / Re-direct 301 to url
without .html extension - Add trailing slash to the static webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash
- Force trailing slash to the Wordpress Webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash
Some examples
domain.tld/index.html >> domain.tld/
domain.tld/file.html >> domain.tld/file/
domain.tld/file.html/ >> domain.tld/file/
domain.tld/wordpress/post-name >> domain.tld/wordpress/post-name/
My code in ROOT htaccess is
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /#removing trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L]#www to non
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(([a-z0-9_]+.)?domain.com)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]#html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]#index redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://domain.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule>The above code do
1. redirect www to non-www
2. Remove trailing slash at the end (if exists)
3. Remove index.html
4. Remove all .html
5. Redirect 301 to filename but doesn't add trailing slash at the end -
#index redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://domain.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L]hi anyone please help I use this code but now getting 404 error. please help.
i also remove this code again but still same issue.
-
Hi Tom,
thanks for your reply.
i have some problems
the above code doesn't
1 - Add trailing slash to the static webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash
so it should be http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles/ instead of http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles
2 - Force trailing slash to the Wordpress Webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash
-
Hey NeatIT!
I see you have a working solution there. Did you have a specific question about the setup?
I did notice that your setup cane sometimes result in chaining 301 redirects, which is one area for possible improvement.
Let me know how we can help!

Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Question about Indexing of /?limit=all
Hi, i've got your SEO Suite Ultimate installed on my site (www.customlogocases.com). I've got a relatively new magento site (around 1 year). We have recently been doing some pr/seo for the category pages, for example /custom-ipad-cases/ But when I search on google, it seems that google has indexed the /custom-ipad-cases/?limit=all This /?limit=all page is one without any links, and only has a PA of 1. Whereas the standard /custom-ipad-cases/ without the /? query has a much higher pa of 20, and a couple of links pointing towards it. So therefore I would want this particular page to be the one that google indexes. And along the same logic, this page really should be able to achieve higher rankings than the /?limit=all page. Is my thinking here correct? Should I disallow all the /? now, even though these are the ones that are indexed, and the others currently are not. I'd be happy to take the hit while it figures it out, because the higher PA pages are what I ultimately am getting links to... Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobAus0 -
Low text-HTML ratios
Are low text-HTML ratios still a negative SEO ranking factor? Today I ran SEMRUSH site audit that showed 344 out of 345 pages on our website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) show an text-HTML ratio that ranges from 8% to 22%. This is characterized as a warning on SEMRUSH. This error did not exist in April when the last SEMRUSH audit was conducted. Is it worthwhile to try to externalize code in order to improve this ratio? Or to add text (major project on a site of this size)? These pages generally have 200-400 words of text. Certain URLs, for example www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/nycofficespaceforlease more text, yet it still shows an text-HTML ratio of only 16%. We recently upgraded to the WordPress 4.2.1. Could this have bloated the code (CSS etcetera) to the detriment of the text-HTML ratio? If Google has become accustomed to more complex code, is this a ratio that I can ignore. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Redirecting index.html to the root
Hi, I was wondering if there is a safe way to consolidate link juice on a single version of a home page. I find incoming links to my site that link to both mysite.com/ and mysite.com/index.html. I've decided to go with mysite.com/ as my main and only URL for the site and now I'd like to transfer all link juice from mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
When i tried 301 redirect from index.html to the root it created an indefinite loop, of course. I know I can use a RewriteRule.., but will it transfer the juice?? Please help!7 -
Our login pages are being indexed by Google - How do you remove them?
Each of our login pages show up under different subdomains of our website. Currently these are accessible by Google which is a huge competitive advantage for our competitors looking for our client list. We've done a few things to try to rectify the problem: - No index/archive to each login page Robot.txt to all subdomains to block search engines gone into webmaster tools and added the subdomain of one of our bigger clients then requested to remove it from Google (This would be great to do for every subdomain but we have a LOT of clients and it would require tons of backend work to make this happen.) Other than the last option, is there something we can do that will remove subdomains from being viewed from search engines? We know the robots.txt are working since the message on search results say: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." But we'd like the whole link to disappear.. Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | desmond.liang1 -
Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?
Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Www and non www how to check it.......for sure. No, really, for absolutely sure!!
Ok, I know it has been asked, answered, and re-asked but I am going to ask for a specific reason. As you know, anyone who is a graphic designer or web developer is also an expert in SEO....Right???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher
I am dealing with a client who is clinging to a developer but wants us to do the SEO on a myriad of sites. All connect to his main site via links, etc. The main site was just redeveloped by a developer who claims extensive SEO knowledge. The client who referred me to them is getting over twenty times the organic clients they are and is in a JV with the new client. Soooo, I want to show them once and for all they are wrong on the www. versus non-www. When I do a Site:NewClient.com in Google I get a total of 13 www.newclient.com url's and 20 newclient.com url's without the www. Oddly, none are dupes of the other. So, where the www.NewClient/toy-boat/ is there, the other might be non www. NewClient/toy-boat/sailing-green/ Even the contact page is in the www.NewClient/contact versus the non www of NewClient/Contact-us/ But, both pages seem to resolve to the non www. (A note here is that I originally instructed the designer to do non www to www. because the page authority was on the www.NewClient and he did opposite. With pages that are actually PDF files, if you try to use the www.NewClient/CoolGuy.pdf it comes up 404. When I check our sites, using Site:We-Build-Better.com ours return all www.We-Build-better/ url's. So, any other advice on how to insure these correct or incorrect? Oddly, we have discovered that sometimes in OSE, even with a correct canonical redirect it shows one without authority and the other with....we have contacted support. Come on mozzers, hook a brother up!0