Add slash to the base url

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 03:52:22PM +0200, Prateek Dayal wrote:

> > Yes, "http://localhost" and "http://localhost/" are identical from
> > HTTP point of view.  It's up to your browser to show it one or
> > another way.
> 
> Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are saying but from a search 
> engine point of view, they are two different urls. In fact I am making 
> this change after reading this in the google reportcard - 
> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html

Again: "http://localhost" and "http://localhost/" are identical.  
Always.  There is no difference.  It's the same as 
"http://example.com:80/" and "http://example.com/".  Port defaults 
to 80, path defaults to "/".

I personally think that it's better to write with trailing slash 
as it's in line with directory links ("http://example.com/dir" -> 
"http://example.com/dir/", as they are in fact different).  But 
it's completely presentational, nothing more.

> So assuming that I want http://localhost to 301 redirect to 
> http://localhost/, how do I go about doing it?

You can't do anything.  Server don't see if there was "/" or not 
in the original URL, it always get request with "/".  RFC 2616 
explicitly requires "/" if there are no path:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-5.1.2

:   ... Note that the absolute path
:   cannot be empty; if none is present in the original URI, it MUST be
:   given as "/" (the server root).

Maxim Dounin