Rewrite .html using .htaccess

We all know that static sites or otherwise called HTML sites are no longer that familiar… or maybe they are?

With all recent Google algorithm changes you might find that some pages are built using static HTML just for speed… in cases like that it’s more likely that you will end up having URL’s looking like this: mydomain.com/blog.html
Well.. no worries, as we have a fix for this and it’s easy!

Using .htaccess and making sure that the following rules do not conflict with any other rules you might have not only you will manage to remove the .html file extension from your URL’s but we also create a permanent redirection for all .html URL’s in order to avoid being penalized by Google.

# This tag ensures the rewrite module is loaded
# enable the rewrite engine
RewriteEngine On
# Set your root directory
RewriteBase /

# remove the .html extension
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.html\ HTTP
RewriteRule (.*)\.html$ $1 [R=301]

# remove index and reference the directory
RewriteRule (.*)/index$ $1/ [R=301]

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

# forward request to html file, **but don't redirect (bot friendly)**
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule (.*) $1\.html [L]

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