Redirect non-trailing slash to trailing slash on homepage URL only

Question

I have a two-part issue.

• I am trying to implement a redirect only for the homepage URL to render with a trailing slash. Example: redirect www.domain.com to www.domain.com/ BUT allow all other URLs to render without a trailing slash.

End Goal:

www.domain.com/
www.domain.com/pages
www.domain.com/pages/post-name

• This get complicated because there is one WordPress install with one .htaccess file but 6 other sites (with different domains) installed under the main WP install. I need to implement the trailing slash only on the homepage URL for a site that is mapped under the main install and shares the same .htaccess file with the main instal domain. So a rewrite base will only affect the main install domain, not the other 6 sites.

This is the first time I have encountered this kind of structure and it has me totally confused. Is this even possible to achieve? Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

There really is no need to force a trailing slash when there is no path, because if the path is empty, it is implied to be / already. Having the slash there or not will make absolutely no difference in the rendering of your pages or how Apache handles the request. Not to mention, redirecting users to have the / appended will just cause them to waste an extra HTTP request.

However, you can prevent Apache from adding the / to URLs which resemble a directory by using this:

DirectorySlash Off

Which will prevent /pages from becoming /pages/. Although, if a user manually types it in with the / at the end, it will still be there. Again, redirecting just to remove a / at the end is a waste.