Question

This is for basic HTML/PHP pages, no query strings, etc.. I have searched high and low and find resources for removing the ‘index.php’ from the URI, or removing ‘.php’ and other file extensions.. and even adding a trailing slash. But, everytime I try to use them all, or use examples that I have found, I get a 500 server error.

I may pass a query string on one page, but really I just want to remove ‘index.php’ from the index page and have all sub pages without the file extension. So, something like this:

domain.com/index.php to domain.com/
domain.com/page1.php to domain.com/page1/
domain.com/page2.php to domain.com/page2/
domain.com/page3.php to domain.com/page3/

All the examples I can find are focused on CMSs, etc.. with query strings, etc.. nothing just focusing on the base URI, which I think might be what was causing the errors i was getting.

Any help is appreciated !!
Thanks

Answer 1

I got this from a rather helpful chap on a forum once – never fully understood it, and there is one caveat; it implies no trailing slash unless the request is a directory.

However, I thought it was worth posting – a guru out there may easily spot the fix!?

# remove .php; use THE_REQUEST to prevent infinite loops
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.php\ HTTP
RewriteRule (.*)\.php$ $1 [R=301]

# remove index
RewriteRule (.*)index$ $1 [R=301]

# remove slash if not directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$
RewriteRule (.*)/ $1 [R=301]

# add .php to access file, but don't redirect
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule (.*) $1\.php [L]