How to Remove 'public' and 'index.php' from URL in CodeIgniter 4

Why Remove public/index.php in CodeIgniter 4?

By default, CodeIgniter 4 includes public/index.php in its URLs (e.g. yourdomain.com/public/index.php/home). Removing it makes your URLs cleaner, professional, and much more SEO-friendly.

Step 1: Copy index.php and .htaccess

First, copy the index.php and .htaccess files from your CodeIgniter's public folder and paste them directly into your project's root folder.

Step 2: Update index.php

Open the index.php file you just pasted in the root directory and find the following line:

$pathsPath = realpath(FCPATH . '../app/Config/Paths.php');

Change it to:

$pathsPath = realpath(FCPATH . 'app/Config/Paths.php');

(We simply removed the ../ because the file is now in the root folder.)

Step 3: Update App.php Configuration

Navigate to app/Config/App.php and find the $baseURL setting. Make sure it points to your domain without the public folder:

public $baseURL = 'http://localhost/your-project-name/';

Next, find the $indexPage setting and remove 'index.php' so it is completely empty:

public $indexPage = '';

Step 4: Configure .htaccess

Open the .htaccess file in your root directory and make sure it has the following standard Apache routing configuration to remove index.php:

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

That's it! Now your CodeIgniter 4 URLs will work perfectly without 'public' or 'index.php'. Test it by visiting yourdomain.com/home.