.htaccess is causing 403 on one link only

Question

Bit of an odd one and I feel it must be answered but I can't seem to find it.

I have the following in my .htaccess file on a custom PHP site (NOT WORDPRESS) :

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteRule ^(contact|gallery|links)$ $1.php [L]

I cannot work out why "gallery" only is giving me a 403.

example.com/links
example.com/contact

Both work as expected and go to the desired pages. However

example.com/gallery

Redirects to

example.com/gallery/

And throws the 403 Forbidden error

gallery.php is a page and can be accessed from the same URL

There's nothing on gallery.php to redirect or check a query string or compare the URI. I cannot understand it.

Really flying blind on .htaccess stuff (always have), so any help greatly appreciated. What am I doing wrong?!

Also, tested it on https:/.htaccess.madewithlove.com/ and it said my work was correct, so really don't understand what it's finding incorrect. Why does it think gallery is a subfolder, not a URL?

And I have JUST realised, I do actually have a gallery folder, so if anyone can tell me how to use the.htaccess to access the page and not the folder, I'd greatly appreciate it, If it helps: there's a .htaccess in the gallery folder to prevent direct access to images:

Options -Indexes
Options -ExecCGI 
# AddHandler cgi-script .php .php3 .php4 .phtml .pl .py .jsp .asp .htm .shtml .sh .cgi

<Files ^(*.jpeg|*.jpg)>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Files>
<FilesMatch "\.(jpe?g)$">
order allow,deny
allow from all
</FilesMatch>

Would they be conflicting?

Answer 1

Since gallery is a physical directory, you will need to set DirectorySlash Off in order to prevent mod_dir appending the trailing slash via a 301 external redirect. (This redirect gets cached persistently by the browser, so you will need to clear your browser cache before continuing.)

Note, however, that when disabling the DirectorySlash , you must also ensure that Options -Indexes is also set to prevent mod_autoindex from generating directory listings when the trailing slash is omitted from a directory, since a DirectoryIndex document in that directory will no longer prevent the directory listing being generated. See the security warning under the DirectorySlash directive in the Apache Docs .

You may also need to set RewriteOptions AllowNoSlash to allow mod_rewrite to match directories that have no trailing slash.

You then need to modify your existing rule...

 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ RewriteRule ^(contact|gallery|links)$ $1.php [L]

Remove the first two RewriteCond directives. They aren't required since you are wanting to rewrite 3 specific URLs. If any of the conditions fail then the rewrite does not occur.

If contact , gallery or links happen to exist as physical files (very unlikely) or directories ( gallery is a directory it seems) then the rewrite does not occur.

---

Summary

DirectorySlash Off

Options +FollowSymlinks -Indexes

RewriteEngine On
RewriteOptions AllowNoSlash

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteRule ^(contact|gallery|links)$ $1.php [L]