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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T03:38:58+00:00

I’m using ExpressionEngine as my CMS and would like to remove underscores from my

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I’m using ExpressionEngine as my CMS and would like to remove underscores from my site’s URLs and replace them with dashes.

For example, I’ve got a URL that is formatted like this:

http://example.com/index.php/menu/friday-lunch

To remove index.php from the URL, I’m using the following mod_rewrite rule:

RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

Which works, since I can just type in: http://example.com/menu/friday-lunch

On the old site I used underscores instead of hyphens for page URIs, so I wrote a mod_rewrite rule to to redirect URIs with underscores to use dashes.

So friday_lunch becomes friday-lunch using the following RewriteRule:

RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*_.*) $1-$2 [N]
RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)$ /$1-$2 [L,R=301]

This rule works rather well, except that it 301 Redirects to example.com/index.php/menu/friday-lunch instead of example.com/menu/friday-lunch — notice the addition of index.php.

Here’s the entire .htaccess I’m currently using:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    # Removes index.php
    RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]
    RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*_.*) $1-$2 [N]
    RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)$ /$1-$2 [L,R=301] 
</IfModule>

How can I redirect all of my URLs with underscores to the equivalent with dashes?

Bonus: to make matters worse, URLs that lead to /system, must not be rewritten with a hyphen, e.g.: example.com/system/login_in/.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Here’s a complete set of RewriteRules that should do what you need:

    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    # Enable Apache's RewriteEngine
    RewriteEngine On

    # Ignore Matching Directories
    RewriteRule ^(images|themes|system) - [L,NC]

    # Replace Underscores with Dashes
    RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)_(.*)$ /$1-$2-$3 [R=301,L]
    RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_(.*)$ /$1-$2 [R=301,L]

    # Remove index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
    RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

    To have your mod_rewrite rules ignore the ExpressionEngine system folder and not replace underscores _ with dashes - use the following:

    RewriteRule ^(images|themes|system) - [L,NC]

    Dissecting the RewriteRule into plain English:

    • The - flag instructions Apache to do nothing, and to not rewrite the URI
    • The L flags means this should be last rule; ignore everything following
    • The NC flag means no-case (so “System” or “SYSTEM” is also matched)

    This “ignore” rule is especially important and you may need to add additional directories to exclude depending on your directory structure.

    Otherwise, you may end up with images and other files saved with underscores that get replaced with dashes.

    Note: If your URLs contain more than three underscores, you’ll need to add another RewriteRule above the existing ones for each Word Separator for URL Titles you want to replace:

    RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)_(.*)_(.*)_(.*)$ /$1-$2-$3-$4-$5 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)_(.*)_(.*)$ /$1-$2-$3-$4 [R=301,L]
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