redirect/ %category%/%postname%.html to /%category%/%postname%

Question

My site was first built with html/css in 2000, and when I rebuilt it with WordPress in 2012, I kept the .html extension in the interest of keeping the same URLs. I'd like to get rid of it now and redirect the old html pages to the new extension-less pages.

My current permalink structure is: /%category%/%postname%.html

I'd like it to be: /%category%/%postname%

To do that, I tried deleting ".html' from the end of the permalink structure, then saving permalinks. Then, I put this in my .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html

But it doesn't work -- pages just give me 404 errors that way.

I took a look at the Yoast permalink redirection tool, but that only redirects to /%postname% -- I'm not sure if it's possible to modify the outputted rule to add the category before the postname.

Answer 1

OK. I finally got it done. Here's what I did: (1.) changed the WordPress permalink structure to /%category%/%postname% and saved.

(2.) Added this to .htaccess: RewriteRule (.+).html?$ https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L] (The rewrite rule in my original question didn't work for me.)

Now the .html URLs are redirecting to the new extensionless URLs.

Answer 2

It sounds like you didn't flush your permalinks. Remove what you wrote in your .htaccess. Set what you had that was working before in the custom section of the permalink settings %category%/%postname%.html, save it, select 'plain', save it, then change it to your new settings %category%/%postname% save it, select 'plain', save it, then go to your custom setting and it should work.