Question

I’m trying to clean up my URLs using mod_rewrite in my .htaccess files.

Let’s say I have the following files on my server:

/about.php
/contact.php

If a user types about or contact, I want about.php or contact.php to be displayed to the user, but ensuring the URL stays the same (i.e. it all happens server-side). Similarly, if the user enters about.php or contact.php, I want it to 301 redirect to about or contact, which will then pull the page server-side, whilst keeping a pretty URL.

What I have tried so far:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule about about.php
RewriteRule contact contact.php
RewriteRule about.php about [R]
RewriteRule contact.php contact [R]

That results in a circular redirect loop.

And the other way round:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule about.php about [R]
RewriteRule contact.php contact [R]
RewriteRule about about.php
RewriteRule contact contact.php

This is functional, but the redirect doesn’t work (the URL stays the same).

How can I make it so that I don’t get a redirect loop but my pages will all point to the version without .php?

Note: I know that [R] is 302 not 301 but I’m using 302 for testing.

Answer 1

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule .* - [L]

RewriteRule ^tech$ tech.php [L]
RewriteRule ^contact$ contact.php [L]
RewriteRule ^tech\.php$ tech [L,R]
RewriteRule ^contact\.php$ contact [L,R]