Many website owners prefer not to expose the programming language used to build their applications. For example, instead of accessing a page as In Apache, this can be achieved using This guide explains how to configure Nginx to automatically serve PHP files without requiring the If Nginx is not already installed on your server, refer to the following installation guides:<\/p>\n Open the Nginx configuration file. If you want this feature to apply only to a specific website, update the corresponding virtual host configuration instead of the default configuration.<\/p>\n Add the following configuration inside the server block:<\/p>\n Example:<\/strong><\/p>\n Instead of:<\/p>\n Users can access:<\/p>\n Before restarting Nginx, verify that the configuration syntax is correct:<\/p>\n A successful validation will display:<\/p>\n Restart the Nginx service for the new configuration to take effect:<\/p>\n Configuring Nginx to automatically handle PHP extensions helps create cleaner, more user-friendly URLs while keeping the underlying technology hidden from visitors. This approach improves URL readability, provides a more professional appearance, and can be implemented with just a few lines of configuration.<\/p>\n Always test the configuration using \u00a0<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/example.com\/about.php<\/code>, it is often cleaner and more professional to use https:\/\/example.com\/about<\/code>.<\/p>\n.htaccess<\/code> rules. In Nginx, the same functionality can be implemented through URL rewriting and the try_files<\/code> directive.<\/p>\n.php<\/code> extension in the URL.<\/p>\nPrerequisites<\/h2>\n
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Implementation<\/h2>\n
vi \/etc\/nginx\/sites-enabled\/default<\/code><\/pre>\nlocation \/ {\n try_files $uri $uri.html $uri\/ @extensionless-php;\n index index.html index.htm index.php;\n}\n\nlocation @extensionless-php {\n rewrite ^(.*)$ $1.php last;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\nHow It Works<\/h3>\n
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try_files<\/code> checks whether the requested file or directory exists.<\/li>\n@extensionless-php<\/code> location.<\/li>\n.php<\/code> extension and processes the request.<\/li>\nhttps:\/\/example.com\/contact.php<\/code><\/pre>\nhttps:\/\/example.com\/contact<\/code><\/pre>\nValidate the Configuration<\/h2>\n
nginx -t<\/code><\/pre>\nnginx: configuration file \/etc\/nginx\/nginx.conf test is successful<\/code><\/pre>\nApply the Changes<\/h2>\n
systemctl restart nginx<\/code><\/pre>\nConclusion<\/h2>\n
nginx -t<\/code> before restarting the service to avoid downtime caused by configuration errors.<\/p>\n