How to remove trailing slash from my root URL in htaccess?

Question

I've tried several ways to remove the trailing slash from my URL in .htaccess and nothing worked but now even my URL can't be found because now it has a slash.

Here is what my .htaccess looks like. I need to get rid of so many redirects and don't have a clue how to do it. And I would like to remove the slash on my permalink on my WordPress site because it's not good SEO and now I can't even make mine work.

How do I get rid of stuff here that isn't working and get rid of slash on my URL example.com? It doesn't matter for rest because I've done a lot of work and there are a lot of trailing slashes on my site. Just want my Domain Permalink Slash gone.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ $1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ $1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

# BEGIN LSCACHE
# END LSCACHE
# BEGIN NON_LSCACHE
# END NON_LSCACHE

# BEGIN GD-SSL
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.+)$
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} ^electricridespro\.com$
RewriteRule .* https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
Header add Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=300"
</IfModule>
# END GD-SSL


# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ $1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ $1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/+$ $1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Of course I don't want my GD-SSL file gone but need to get the rest out of here safely and get exact code to make my Permalink example.com/ get rid of slash and make it example.com but not take the slashes off the rest that are on other URLs in my site so my site does't get broken.

Answer 1

You cannot remove the trailing slash from the domain name URL. Your home page may or may not have a slash at the end of the domain name depending on which browser you use. Most browsers show the slash. As a webmaster, you cannot control the trailing slash on the home page. It is always implicitly there. There is no .htaccess rule you can use to get rid of it. See:

• Is trailing slash automagically added on click of home page URL in browser?
• Canonical URL for a home page and trailing slashes

You say "now even my url can't be found because now it has a slash". The trailing slash on your home page URL is not the issue. I'm not sure if mean that there is a "404 not found" error, or if you mean that search engines are not indexing the page. If it is the former, it will work the same with or without the slash for the home page URL. If it is the latter, search engines will index pages both with slashes and without.

You also say "I would like to remove the slash on my permalink on my Wordpress site because it's not good SEO". There is no meaningful difference in SEO between URLs that have and do not a trailing slash. Historically it has been used on URLs that represent a directory. Many times I've seen recommendations to omit trailing slashes for URL simplicity. However, having trailing slashes on your URLs won't hurt SEO as long as you link to that version of them consistently. And as I've said earlier, there is no way to remove a slash on the home page.