Clean URLs

Clean URLs take real work on most servers—rewrite rules, framework configuration, boilerplate. On Surge they're automatic for every project:

• /hello-world serves hello-world.html
• /foo/bar/ redirects to /foo/bar when the content is foo/bar.html
• /foo/bar redirects to /foo/bar/ when the content is foo/bar/index.html
• www.example.com redirects to example.com (or vice versa—whichever form you publish to is canonical)
• http:// can redirect to https://

Build your site with plain .html files and link to the extensionless paths—Surge resolves them. Directory-style URLs (/guide/ backed by guide/index.html) work equally well; pick the shape you like and the other resolves or redirects to it.

Why the redirects matter

Serving the same page at multiple URLs—with and without a trailing slash, with and without www—splits your search ranking and your analytics across duplicates. Surge's redirects guarantee each page has exactly one canonical URL, and everything else points at it with a proper redirect. There's nothing to configure and no way to get it wrong.