Remove .php File Extensions

[unemployment]

How do you remove the .php from the file extensions in the URL? I've noticed a lot of companies now don't showcase what type of server side language they use. Is this something that would need to be figured out in .htaccess?

[Maq]

This is usually done in the .htaccess with mod_rewrite, we have a section for that, I'll move you there.

[unemployment]

This is usually done in the .htaccess with mod_rewrite, we have a section for that, I'll move you there.

 

Thanks Maq.  I'm a bit lost with how to do this as a mod_rewrite.  I also really don't want to have to rename my links since my application is almost fully built. 

[AyKay47]

I have not studied .htacces yet, so I won't pretend to know about this...however I found a tutorial on the subject

 

http://www.easymodrewrite.com/example-extensions

[cags]

I also really don't want to have to rename my links since my application is almost fully built. 

 

If you want your links to not contain a file extension, you have to remove the file extension. That's all there is too it I'm afraid. All mod_rewrite does is intercepts incoming requests and serves up a specific resource, which you configure based on various patterns. For example, if your site uses php files you could use something like the following (quick example, could be typos)...

 

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !-d
RewriteRule ^[^.]+$ /%{REQUEST_URI}.php [L]

 

...this will take all requests to the server for files that don't exist and attempt to serve up a file with that name. So let's say somebody request http://www.domain.com/contact then it would attempt to serve up the file http://www.domain.com/contact.php.

[unemployment]

Does anyone know the impact this has on SEO?  I have successfully redirected links to cleaner looking urls, but now the file can be accessed in two place.

 

for example you can go to mysite.com/contact and mysite.com/contact.php

 

I really don't want both accessible.  Any way to force a page load of contact.php to go to just contact?

 

[cags]

It's possible but it starts to get a bit hacky at that point. One way is to 301 redirect all requests to the page that don't have a specific query string, then simply append that query string when you rewrite the URI.