/trailing-slash-guide

Understand and fix your static website trailing slash issues!

Primary LanguageHTMLMIT LicenseMIT

Trailing Slash Guide

Have trailing slash problems after deploying a static website in production?

This repo explains factually the behavior of:

We also suggest some possible solutions

Intro

Let's get more familiar with trailing slash issues.

Common problems:

  • SEO/perf issues: when browsing /myPath, your host redirects to /myPath/
  • 404 issues: relative link such as <a href="otherPath"> are resolved differently (/otherPath or /myPath/otherPath depending on the presence/absence of a trailing slash
  • UX issues: your host adds a trailing slash, and later your single-page-application frontend router removes it, leading to a confusing experience and flickering url

Causes:

  • static site generators can emit different files for the same path /myPath: /myPath.html or /myPath/index.html (the later can lead to an additional trailing slash)
  • host providers all have a different behavior when serving static files, there is no standard

Summary

Considering this static site:

static
│
├── file.html
│
├── folder
│   └── index.html
│
├── both.html
└── both
    └── index.html

Behavior of various static hosting providers:

Host Settings Url /file /file/ /file.html /folder /folder/ /folder/index.html /both /both/ /both.html /both/index.html
GitHub Pages link ✅ 💢 404 ✅ ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Netlify Default link ✅ ➡️ /file ✅ ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ✅ ✅ ➡️ /both ✅ ✅
Netlify Pretty Urls on link ✅ ➡️ /file ✅ ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ✅ ✅ ➡️ /both ✅ ✅
Netlify Pretty Urls off link ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Vercel Default link 💢 404 💢 404 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Vercel cleanUrls=false trailingSlash=undefined link 💢 404 💢 404 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Vercel cleanUrls=false trailingSlash=false link 💢 404 💢 404 ✅ ✅ ➡️ /folder ✅ ✅ ➡️ /both ✅ ✅
Vercel cleanUrls=false trailingSlash=true link 💢 404 💢 404 ✅ ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ✅ ➡️ /both/ ✅ ✅ ✅
Vercel cleanUrls=true trailingSlash=undefined link ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Vercel cleanUrls=true trailingSlash=false link ✅ ➡️ /file ➡️ /file ✅ ➡️ /folder ➡️ /folder ✅ ➡️ /both ➡️ /both ➡️ /both
Vercel cleanUrls=true trailingSlash=true link ➡️ /file/ ✅ ➡️ /file/ ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ➡️ /folder/ ➡️ /both/ ✅ ➡️ /both/ ➡️ /both/
Cloudflare Pages link ✅ ➡️ /file ➡️ /file ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ➡️ /folder/ ✅ ✅ ➡️ /both ➡️ /both/
Render link ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Azure Static Web Apps link ✅ ➡️ /file ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅

Help Wanted

Let's keep this resource up-to-date, and make it exhaustive together.