How To Remove File Extensions (Like .html and .php) From Your Website

Want to remove those pesky .html, .php, or any other file extension? This guide teaches you how to remove them, so your URLs are clean and simple!

The code

All you have to do is add this code into your .htaccess file and save it! Like all file changes, it can take some time before it updates everywhere, but you can speed up the process on your devices simply by clearing your browser's cache. This code snippet removes those (possibly) annoying file extensions on your website to give you a clean URL.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L,NC]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.html [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L,NC]

IMPORTANT! The "RewriteEngine on" line should only be found ONCE in your entire .htaccess file. If it is needed, is should be located before any other statements (At the top of the file).

Note: An .htaccess file located in a sub-directory overrides any duplicate rules from previous .htaccess files. For example, if you have a .htaccess file located in the root defining a 404 and 403 error page, and another .htaccess located in the “test” folder defining only a 404 error page, any files and folders in the “test” folder will use the 404 page defined in the "test" .htaccess file, and the 403 page defined in the root .htaccess file.

The code above removes the .php and .html file extensions. To remove other file extensions, simply copy the code again and replace “.html” or “.php” with the extension you want to remove.

IMPORTANT! If you are using this code to remove file extensions, it is recomended you change your links, especially those used within PHP (Like PHP include or require) and HTML tags (Like HTML forums)

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Installation

Unsure of how to install this code? It's pretty simple. A .htaccess file is called “.htaccess”, with nothing before the dot. Try finding this on your FTP software. Many systems don’t allow filenames starting with a dot (So downloading a htaccess file can be difficult at times), so that also restricts how we can create a .htaccess file. It is possible to get around these restrictions though, so here are the steps!

1. Open your text-editing program and code your .htaccess file
2. Once you are finished, save it as “htaccess.txt” (We will fix its name later)
3. Upload “htaccess.txt” to your webserver and rename it to “.htaccess” (Remember that the dot is important!)

If you are still confused, or it's not working for you, check out the more detailed instruction in our Finding, Creating, and Editing a .htaccess file article.

Conclusion

Hopefully you were successful in installing this snippet, if you need help, feel free to send us a message! Check out the rest of the htaccess snippets to see what other amazing things you can do!

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