.htaccess - How to remove .html from URL?

Question

How to remove .html from the URL of a static page?

Also, I need to redirect any url with .html to the one without it. (i.e. www.example.com/page.html to www.example.com/page ).

Answer 1

I think some explanation of Jon's answer would be constructive. The following:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

checks that if the specified file or directory respectively doesn't exist, then the rewrite rule proceeds:

RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [L,R=301]

But what does that mean? It uses regex (regular expressions). Here is a little something I made earlier...

I think that's correct.

NOTE: When testing your .htaccess do not use 301 redirects. Use 302 until finished testing, as the browser will cache 301s. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/9204355/3217306

Update: I was slightly mistaken, . matches all characters except newlines, so includes whitespace. Also, here is a helpful regex cheat sheet

Sources:

http://community.sitepoint.com/t/what-does-this-mean-rewritecond-request-filename-f-d/2034/2

https://mediatemple.net/community/products/dv/204643270/using-htaccess-rewrite-rules