How to force Wordpress to remove trailing slashes?

james-tb

I've searched around quite a bit for a solution here, but I can't find anything. I apologize if this is too technical for the forum.

I have a Wordpress site hosted on Nginx by WP Engine. Currently it resolves requests to URLs either with or without a trailing slash.

So, both of these URLs are functional:

<code>mysite.com/single-post</code>

and

<code>mysite.com/single-post/</code>

I would like to remove the trailing slash from all posts, forcing mysite.com/single-post/ to redirect to mysite.com/single-post. I created a redirect rule on the server:

^/(.*)/$ -> /$1

and this worked well for end-users, but rendered the admin panel inaccessible. Somewhere, Wordpress is adding a trailing slash back on to the URL mysite.com/wp-admin, resulting in a redirect loop. I can't see anything obvious in .htaccess.

Where is this rule adding a trailing slash to 'wp-admin' established?

Thanks very much

DonnaDuncan

Are you using the yoast SEO plugin? There is a setting under Advanced > Permalinks that forces a trailing slash onto URLs. I'd try looking at that first.

Martijn_Scheijbeler

Hi John,

It seems obvious, but why not go for a adding a trailing slash to every URL instead or removing it, would solve your issues at least.

james-tb

Thanks for the replies, Donna, Martijn. I am running Yoast and considered adding the trailing slash, but:

-Most of the inbound links we have are to URLs with no slash

-The slash style seems a little dated in general-few sites use them these days.

I'd really love to just figure out how to solve the issue a little closer to the root.

ATP

Hi John,

I asked something similar myself something myself but im on the Magento platform. This should matter as the solution wasn't platform specific. It just involved editing htaccess file. If your up for editing your .htacccess file then it could be of some use. The topic URL is below and it contains multiple solutions for editing and removing the / and the debugging process we went through along the way. (Courtesy of Andy and Dirk) Hopefully its of some use to you

https://moz.com/community/q/cms-pages-multiple-urls

SUMMARY:
If you know how to edit your .htaccess and your ready to dive straight in this code should do it.

RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

If you want the page with explanations and walk-through please see the original topic as editing your htaccess badly can cause all sorts of errors.

Edit: I realised i was probably a tiny bit lazy and should of probably included this link which is the original link i got sent from stackoverflow with instructions on how to to edit your .htaccess file.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21417263/htaccess-add-remove-trailing-slash-from-url

Dirks answer later in the post offer guidance on applying it to certain parameters which should prove helpful if your still having loop problems with the admin page.

evolvingSEO

Hi John

Did ATP's solution help you out? Let us know if we can look into this further!

james-tb

Thanks so much, ATP! It looks like writing the condition into .htaccess does the trick—at least for my local install. Is this because the commands located within the

BEGIN WordPress

END WordPress

comments only apply to URLs outside of the WP admin area?

Thanks again, ATP—that was a very thorough and helpful response!

ATP

Hi John, sorry ive been on leave so not checked back on the forums.

Glad it looks like its working for you. I dont think the comments do anything except signify where word press has begun writing to the .htaccess (i dont run wordpress so can't be sure). Normally comments do nothing but signify something useful to the user.

I can try to breakdown the code a little for you, but my htaccess isn't fantastic so its by no means complete.

Firstline: RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d

RewriteCond% = This says use this condition if....
{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d = ... is NOT a directory

RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]
I believe this bit takes a snapshot of the url upto the final / then rewrites it to that snapshot.

The combination of these must mean it doesn't affect your wordpress admin directory. I know this code can break if your install is within a directory (as is discussed in the stackover flow link) but they have provided a solution for that in that topic. I would say test if on your live website to make complete sure it will work as this may be slightly different to your local install. Have a back-up ready just incase it doesn't.

Make sure you check every url including

Homepage
Pages
Posts
Category Pages
Sub Category Pages
Post Pages
Any images or files

To make sure it is working as expected on all of them.

BlueprintMarketing

WPEis run on a base server using Apache with a Nginx proxy so you can use the WP engine 301 redirect system built-in or you can simply add a redirect to the HTAccess file. If you would like to use a tool to do this I recommend this one another alternative is to ask WP engine to make a change for you.https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/non-slash-vs-slash-urls/ApacheJust copy to your htaccess:```
https://example.com/page/

**https://example.com/page** 
``` 
<label for="nonslash">**Slash to Non-Slash URLs**</label>

> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
> RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule>

**Non-Slash to Slash URLs**

```
****Apache**
https://example.com/page**

https://example.com/page/


> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
> RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])$ /$1/ [L,R=301]</ifmodule>

USEING Nginx to do

**https://example.com/page/**

https://example.com/page


As you see, there is one tiny difference between those two URLs, and it’s the trailing slash at the end. In order to avoid duplicate content, if you are using Nginx you can **remove the trailing slash from Nginx** URLs.

Place this inside your virtual host file in the server {} block configuration:

> ```
> rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;
> ```

Full example:

> ```
> server {
> listen 80;
> server_name www.mysite.com;
> rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;
> }
> ```

All done, now Nginx will remove all those trailing slashes.

USEING Nginx to do
https://example.com/page
https://example.com/page/


Add a trailing slash by placing this inside your virtual host file in the server {} block configuration:

> ```
> rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ permanent;
> ```

Full example:

> ```
> server {
> listen 80;
> server_name www.mysite.com;
> rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ permanent;
> }
> ```

From now on, Nginx should add your trailing slash automatically to every url

*   https://www.scalescale.com/tips/nginx/add-trailing-slash-nginx/
*   https://www.scalescale.com/tips/nginx/nginx-remove-trailing-slash/

 I hope this helps,

Tom

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