How to hide page file in URL?

[davelev]

I see lots of sites with URLs like:

(these are not real URLs below, don't try them!)
www.travel.com
www.travel.com/flights
www.travel.com/flights/international

My sites always show:
www.travel.com/index.php
www.travel.com/flights/index.php
www.travel.com/flights/international/blabla.php

So... these URLs show the TLDs, the directories, but never the page files themselves (.htm, .php etc...)

How to do this? By the way: I have static pages, of course...

And: if we can hide them, is that a problem in backlinking, SEO, search engine indexing, whatsoever?

[-10]

You can use .htaccess redirects

As far as I know it doesn't affect SEO though if your inbounds get split between flights/ and flights/index.php they won't count for each other's rankings.

I think this would work:

IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

[davelev]

Wait... I should edit my .htaccess file?

I was wondering if there is a single script that can modify my whole site, all the URLs

[johneva]

This may help.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/rewrite/

[pandy1021]

Actually when applying codes using htaccess, you're not necessarily hiding the url, instead your just redirecting, securing, reforming your website url to be more readable, organized and SEO friendly. It's sort of declaring what is the url address you prefer for a webpage.

Check:
htaccess - Security for webmasters
5 useful url rewriting examples using .htaccess
Create SEO Friendly URLs With Htaccess Mod Rewrite in 3 Easy Steps

[VastLance]

Hello,

By editing the .htaccess, you specify the directories to redirect and those to not, and by doing that, you can specify to apply those rules to the whole website, without needing to edit everything alone.
The .htaccess solution provided above is the safer and best (SEO point) solution for doing this type of changes, even scripts that you may find online will use same methods, so it will be better that you do it by yourself, from time to learn something new

[davelev]

I am going to check this out and return with updates. Thank you for helping.

[davelev]

Tell me more about ajax

[davelev]

How about just hiding the extension .php, .htm?

I will keep everything, so they will look like:

www.mysite.com/folder/page

instead of:

www.mysite.com/folder/page.php

[wmaster]

Originally Posted by davelev

How about just hiding the extension .php, .htm?

I will keep everything, so they will look like:

www.mysite.com/folder/page

instead of:

www.mysite.com/folder/page.php

Example for removing file extentions for .html pages, it can be adopted to other files as well.

RewriteEngine on
#
## Internally rewrite extensionless file requests to .html files ##
#
# If the requested URI does not contain a period in the final path-part
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[^./]+)$
# and if it does not exist as a directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# and if it does not exist as a file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# then add .html to get the actual filename
RewriteRule (.*) /$1.html [L]
#
#
## Externally redirect clients directly requesting .html page URIs to extensionless URIs
#
# If client request header contains html file extension
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^.]+\.)+html\ HTTP
# externally redirect to extensionless URI
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[davelev]

OK, but where do I write this?

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Originally Posted by davelev

OK, but where do I write this?

Originally Posted by sarnatech

Hello Friends,

1.If you are using a custom theme, some of the following may not apply, depending on how much you have altered the templates.
2.You can use the skin.css, portal.css or module.css file for this customization. I personally recommend changing the portal.css file.
3. Open the Portal.css file in your favorite text/html editor. The file is located in the Portals/{portalId}/ directory.
4. Add this to the very bottom of the file if you wish to hide the URL on the Group Details page:

Thanks

This not applicable to your problem Dave, they copied and pasted from here just to get a post count without reading the whole thread.

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Dave,
Why are you wanting to do this?

Is this an existing site you are doing this to?

If so, It will affect your SEO if not handled properly. FYI: flights/page is different from flights/page.htm (or any other extension) in the eyes of the SEs.

Website Redesign
Whether it is an overhaul of your existing site using the same technology as it had originally or if you have decided to change the technology used to run your site you need to keep track of all changes and use 301 permanent redirects to point to the new format or new web page file names. Examples:

Whole article: 301 Redirects: What You Need to Know

If you are trying to hide the technology you are using, that won't work either. If they are determined to figure it out all they have to do is a header check.