Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to force Wordpress to remove trailing slashes?
-
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 tomysite.com/single-post
. I created a redirect rule on the server:^/(.*)/$ -> /$1
and this worked well for end-users, but rendered the admin panel inaccessible. Somewhere, Wordpress is adding a trailing slash back on to the URL
mysite.com/wp-admin
, resulting in a redirect loop. I can't see anything obvious in .htaccess.Where is this rule adding a trailing slash to 'wp-admin' established?
Thanks very much
-
WPEis run on a base server using Apache with a Nginx proxy so you can use the WP engine 301 redirect system built-in or you can simply add a redirect to the HTAccess file. If you would like to use a tool to do this I recommend this one another alternative is to ask WP engine to make a change for you.https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/non-slash-vs-slash-urls/ApacheJust copy to your htaccess:```
https://example.com/page/**https://example.com/page** ``` <label for="nonslash">**Slash to Non-Slash URLs**</label> > <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d > RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule> **Non-Slash to Slash URLs** ``` ****Apache** https://example.com/page**
> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f > RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])$ /$1/ [L,R=301]</ifmodule>
USEING Nginx to do
**https://example.com/page/**
As you see, there is one tiny difference between those two URLs, and it’s the trailing slash at the end. In order to avoid duplicate content, if you are using Nginx you can **remove the trailing slash from Nginx** URLs. Place this inside your virtual host file in the server {} block configuration: > ``` > rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; > ``` Full example: > ``` > server { > listen 80; > server_name www.mysite.com; > rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; > } > ``` All done, now Nginx will remove all those trailing slashes.
USEING Nginx to do
https://example.com/page
https://example.com/page/Add a trailing slash by placing this inside your virtual host file in the server {} block configuration: > ``` > rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ permanent; > ``` Full example: > ``` > server { > listen 80; > server_name www.mysite.com; > rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ permanent; > } > ``` From now on, Nginx should add your trailing slash automatically to every url * https://www.scalescale.com/tips/nginx/add-trailing-slash-nginx/ * https://www.scalescale.com/tips/nginx/nginx-remove-trailing-slash/ I hope this helps, Tom
-
Hi John, sorry ive been on leave so not checked back on the forums.
Glad it looks like its working for you. I dont think the comments do anything except signify where word press has begun writing to the .htaccess (i dont run wordpress so can't be sure). Normally comments do nothing but signify something useful to the user.
I can try to breakdown the code a little for you, but my htaccess isn't fantastic so its by no means complete.
Firstline: RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
RewriteCond% = This says use this condition if....
{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d = ... is NOT a directoryRewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]
I believe this bit takes a snapshot of the url upto the final / then rewrites it to that snapshot.The combination of these must mean it doesn't affect your wordpress admin directory. I know this code can break if your install is within a directory (as is discussed in the stackover flow link) but they have provided a solution for that in that topic. I would say test if on your live website to make complete sure it will work as this may be slightly different to your local install. Have a back-up ready just incase it doesn't.
Make sure you check every url including
Homepage
Pages
Posts
Category Pages
Sub Category Pages
Post Pages
Any images or filesTo make sure it is working as expected on all of them.
-
Thanks so much, ATP! It looks like writing the condition into .htaccess does the trick—at least for my local install. Is this because the commands located within the
BEGIN WordPress
END WordPress
comments only apply to URLs outside of the WP admin area?
Thanks again, ATP—that was a very thorough and helpful response!
-
Hi John
Did ATP's solution help you out? Let us know if we can look into this further!
-
Hi John,
I asked something similar myself something myself but im on the Magento platform. This should matter as the solution wasn't platform specific. It just involved editing htaccess file. If your up for editing your .htacccess file then it could be of some use. The topic URL is below and it contains multiple solutions for editing and removing the / and the debugging process we went through along the way. (Courtesy of Andy and Dirk) Hopefully its of some use to you
https://moz.com/community/q/cms-pages-multiple-urls
SUMMARY:
If you know how to edit your .htaccess and your ready to dive straight in this code should do it.RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Trailing slash URLs and canonical links
Hi, I've seen a fair amount of topics speaking about the difference between domain names ending with or without trailing slashes, the impact on crawlers and how it behaves with canonical links.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
However, it sticks to domain names only.
What about subfolders and pages then? How does it behaves with those? Say I've a site structured like this:
https://www.domain.com
https://www.domain.com/page1 And for each of my pages, I've an automatic canonical link ending with a slash.
Eg. rel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/page1/" /> for the above page. SEM Rush flags this as a canonical error. But is it exactly?
Are all my canonical links wrong because of that slash? And as subsidiary question, both domain.com/page1 and domain.com/page1/ are accessible. Is it this a mistake or it doesn't make any difference (I've read that those are considered different pages)? Thanks!
G0 -
Using 410 To Remove URLs Starting With Same Word
We had a spam injection a few months ago. We successfully cleaned up the site and resubmitted to google. I recently received a notification showing a spike in 404 errors. All of the URLS have a common word at the beginning injected via the spam: sitename.com/mono
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
sitename.com/mono.php?buy-good-essays
sitename.com/mono.php?professional-paper-writer There's about 100 total URLS with the same syntax with the word "mono" in them. Based on my research, it seems that it would be best to serve a 410. I wanted to know what the line of HTACCESS code would be to do that in bulk for any URL that has the word "mono" after the sitename.com/0 -
Yoast and wordpress duplicate meta
I'm using the Yoast plugin with wordpress and have noticed in my HTML I have duplicate meta data. For example my header starts with
Technical SEO | | simonatkinsphoto
<title>(title) </title<span><<br /><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span>Then I have the 'This site is optimised by Yoast" tagline followed by the same meta -<br /> <span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">name</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:title</span><span>" content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span></span></span>Is this likely to cause problems with Google and is there a way to stop both wordpress and Yoast adding meta to the header. </p></title>0 -
How to remove Parameters from Google Search Console?
Hi All, Following are parameter configuration in search console - Parameters - fl
Technical SEO | | adamjack
Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - Yes, Changes, reorders, or narrows page content.
How does this parameter affect page content? - Narrow
Which URLs with this parameter should Googlebot crawl? - Let Googlebot decide (Default) Query - Actually it is filter parameter. I have already set canonical on filter page. Now I am doing tracking of filter pages via data layer and tag manager so in google analytic I am not able to see filter url's because of this parameter. So I want to delete this parameter. Can anyone please help me? Thanks!0 -
Bulk URL Removal in Webmaster Tools
One of Wordpress sites was hacked (for about 10 hours), and Google picked up 4000+ urls in the index. The site is fixed, but I'm stuck with all those urls in the index. All the urls of of the form: walkerorthodontics.com/index.php?online-payday-cash-loan.htmloncewe The only bulk removal option I could find was to remove an entire folder, but I can't do that, as it would only leave the homepage and kill off everything else. For some crazy reason, the removal tools doesn't support wildcards, so that obvious solution is right out. So, how do it get rid of 4000 results? And no, waiting around for them to 404 out of the index isn't an option.
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
How to Remove a website from your Bing Webmaster Tools account
I have a site in Bing Webmaster Tools that I no longer work on. I can't seem to find where to delete this website from my webmaster tools account. Anyone know how (there doesn't seem to be anything obvious under Bing Help or on a Google Search).
Technical SEO | | TopFloor0 -
Redirection plugin: wordpress vs apache module?
Hi, Any one familiar with the wordpress plugin 'redirection' Are there any SEO benefits of having the plugin write the 301 redirects into the .htaccess? The standard mode does not use .htaccess but has wordpress genertae the 301s Thanks
Technical SEO | | Justin10