Clean URLs in Static HTML Sites with .htaccess

Introduction

If you're hosting a simple static HTML website, you’ve probably noticed this issue:

✅ /services.html — works perfectly
❌ /services — gives a 404 error

This is because the server expects exact filenames unless told otherwise. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to fix that and get clean URLs (like /about) working on static HTML sites using a small tweak to your .htaccess file.

Why Does This Happen?

When you visit a URL like /about, the server looks for a folder named about/ and tries to load about/index.html. But in most static websites, you just have a file called about.html — not a folder. So, the server can’t find it and returns a 404.

✅ Solution: Use .htaccess to Rewrite URLs

If you're using Hostinger or any hosting that supports Apache (or LiteSpeed), you can add the following rule in your .htaccess file inside public_html:

RewriteEngine On
									RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
									RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
									RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html [L]

🔍 What This Does

! -d → Only rewrite if the path is NOT a directory
%{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f → Checks if a matching .html file exists
RewriteRule → Rewrites the URL behind the scenes to load the correct file

✅ Result

Now, you can access the following clean URLs:

/services → serves services.html
/about → serves about.html
/contact → serves contact.html

All without needing to manually type .html in the browser — a small change, but a big win for user experience and aesthetics.

💡 Bonus Tip: This Works on Hostinger Too

If you're using Hostinger (like I am), it uses LiteSpeed — a high-performance, Apache-compatible server. So, all .htaccess rules work the same way as on Apache.

Conclusion

Static HTML sites don’t offer routing by default, but a simple `.htaccess` rule can make your URLs cleaner and more professional.

If you’ve been frustrated by broken links like /services not working — now you know why, and exactly how to fix it.

💬 Have you faced this issue? Try the fix and let me know how it goes!

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