Must-Have htaccess Tips for you to Avoid Duplicate Content on Your Site

In order to be able to implement these tips it is necessary that your Apache server already has the mod_rewrite module activated. mod_rewrite and .htaccess are used together so that your site has the possibility to present semantic and public friendly URLs.

In the past it was more common to find sites that have addresses like www.mysite.com/index.php?id=1. Nowadays, this is already completely out of use. It is much more interesting to use an address like this: www.mysite.com/my-good-post, do you agree?

Well, considering that you have already made the necessary settings for the .htaccess file to work properly, I present my tips used in my day-to-day.

1. Remove slash (/) at the end of the URL

RewriteCond    %{HTTP_HOST} !^. [NC]
RewriteRule    ^(.+[^/])/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

2. Insert the www if you don't have one.

RewriteCond    %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
RewriteRule    ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

3. Remove index.php, if it exists

RewriteCond    %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php
RewriteRule    ^(.*)$ / [R=301,L]

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. This way you guarantee that your project will always be accessed without bar at the end (/), always with www and avoid that the home is accessed via /index.php.

Here, follows the complete code of my .htaccess used in most of my projects.

  RewriteEngine on

 #redirect if exist end slash
  RewriteCond    %{HTTP_HOST} !^. [NC]
  RewriteRule    ^(.+[^/])/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

 #redirect if does not exist www
  RewriteCond    %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
  RewriteRule    ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

 #redirect if exist index.php
  RewriteCond    %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php
  RewriteRule    ^(.*)$ / [R=301,L]