How to remove `/index.php` from all urls, including the last trailing slash? – SEO

I’ve been looking around the web and especially here on stackoverflow for THE answer to this question.

I only use directories with an index.php file in it. Includables and private stuff are outside the public_html (cpanel) directory.

By using directories, anchor links and queries will look like:

http://domain.com/sub/#anchor or http://domain.com/sub/?query

And I just don’t like it. People keep telling me that this is irrelevant for SEO but I don’t think that this is the case. Firstly because I want consistency, secondly, trailing slashes creates duplicates thus I need 301 redirects! Consistency and duplicates are indeed a SEO problem!

This is just an example of how my website is structured:

/
·--index.php
|
·--/about-us/
|  |
|  ·--index.php
·--/contact-us/
   |
   ·--index.php

Users will never know that about-us is a directory, and they won’t type the last trailing slash anyway. This creates duplicates and HTTP errors.

On the web I’ve found only non-working examples, and as for what I’ve understood, I have to internally add the trailing slash and index.php. This helps to avoid security problems and makes all the thing work!

Here, and here I asked something similar. But in that case I had to create the /public directory. Now I am managing to change host, and I will be able to use the non public directory to store php files.

Since I don’t need the /public directory anymore, I copied part of that code and pasted it on a new .htaccess.

Here is the .htaccess

# Options
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews -Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
DirectorySlash off

# Enable Rewrite Engine
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

# www to non-www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %1##%{HTTPS}s ^(.+)##(?:on(s)|)
RewriteRule ^ http%2://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301,NE]

# remove trailing slash from all URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} s(.+?)/+[?s]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /$1 [R=301,L,NE]

# To externally redirect /dir/file.php to /dir/file
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} s/+(.+?).php[s?] [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [R=301,NE,L]

# internally add trailing / to directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule !/$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L]

# To internally forward /dir/file to /dir/file.php
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.php -f [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+?)/?$ $1.php [L]

<FilesMatch ^.>
  order allow,deny
  deny from all
</FilesMatch>

<Files *.inc>
  order allow,deny
  deny from all
</Files>

The code seems to work well in subdirectories but not in root. I guess that this is because the code above was tailored to work on the /public subdirectory.

How can I make it work on root too?

To sum-up, I need 301 redirects, otherwise there will be duplicates of content!!

http://www.domain.com/ R–> http://domain.com/

http://domain.com/ R–> http://domain.com

http://domain.com/sub/ R–> http://domain.com/sub

http://domain.com/sub/index.php R–> http://domain.com/sub

http://domain.com/sub/index.php#anchor R–> http://domain.com/sub#anchor

http://domain.com/sub/#anchor R–> http://domain.com/sub#anchor