undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Converting files from .html to .php or editing .htaccess file

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Converting files from .html to .php or editing .htaccess file

Technical SEO
7
11
5.0k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • JohnHerrigel
    JohnHerrigel last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 4:04 PM

    Good day all,

    I have a bunch of files that are .html and I want to add some .php to them.

    It seems my 2 options are

    1. Convert .html to .php and 301 redirect

    or

    1. add this line of code to my .htaccess file and keep all files that are .html as .html

    AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

    My gut is that the 2nd way is better so as  not alter any SEO rankings, but wanted to see if anybody had any experience with this line of code in their .htaccess file as definitely don't wan to mess up my entire site 🙂

    Thanks for any help!

    John

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • donford
      donford last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 10:18 PM Feb 13, 2012, 10:18 PM

      Hi John

      The first line removes the extension

      The second line adds them back in a specific order IE you want PHP to execute first.

      If you got it going that is what counts.

      Good luck,

      Don

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • JohnHerrigel
        JohnHerrigel @donford last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 9:57 PM Feb 13, 2012, 9:57 PM

        Thanks so much for this Don.. this is what I added that seemed to work for my server

        AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .html .htm

        As the AddType caused errors but doing  some further research I found the above code.

        I wonder if what you propose would accomplish what I did?

        Thanks and all the best,

        John

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • donford
          donford last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 9:10 PM Feb 13, 2012, 9:09 PM

          Hi John,

          If the URL's are well indexed and doing well, you "may" not want to change the url. To simply add the ability to run php first you can do it very easily with just what you thought, .htaccess

          In fact when I took over as webmaster on my corporate site which was indexed very well I had to do just that.

          Add this to your .htaccess file:

          RemoveHandler .html .htm
          AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

          JohnHerrigel 1 Reply Last reply Feb 13, 2012, 9:57 PM Reply Quote 0
          • Highland
            Highland @JohnHerrigel last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 7:25 PM Feb 13, 2012, 7:25 PM

            If you really want to go this route, add this to your site .htaccess

            RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
            RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]

            So domain.com/file will access file.html

            Again, the caveat is there is a short term SEO hit for doing this. Long term, you should be fine.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JohnHerrigel
              JohnHerrigel @KeriMorgret last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 7:08 PM Feb 13, 2012, 7:08 PM

              This is a sweet idea.. any tutorial on this? How does it effect existing links directed at the .html and .php pages?

              Thanks Keri!

              Highland 1 Reply Last reply Feb 13, 2012, 7:25 PM Reply Quote 0
              • KeriMorgret
                KeriMorgret last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 6:36 PM Feb 13, 2012, 6:36 PM

                Have you considered just rewriting your URLs so they don't use extensions at all? That way, when you use a different technology, you don't need to rewrite your URLs once again. If you look at SEOmoz, you see they don't use .php or .html as extensions, but instead have no extensions.

                JohnHerrigel 1 Reply Last reply Feb 13, 2012, 7:08 PM Reply Quote 0
                • jpgprinting
                  jpgprinting last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 5:41 PM Feb 13, 2012, 5:41 PM

                  I did option 1 on one of my websites some time ago and works fine, rankings are the same. Takes about 2 moth to get the same visits on all the links again.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • SteveGerencser
                    SteveGerencser last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 5:18 PM Feb 13, 2012, 5:18 PM

                    We use the AddType function all the time when updating websites. It's far easier to do that that to recreate everything and redirect it.

                    It allows all of your internal navigation to remain as is and it keeps all of your inbound links from becoming redirected links. Also, remember that it has been announced that 301 redirected links lose value over time so this is another reason to not do it the hard way.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • kdaly100
                      kdaly100 last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 4:34 PM Feb 13, 2012, 4:34 PM

                      Just make sure that you don't redirect all HTML files.  I suspect that either way is equal.  What you are telling in either case i

                      "Hi Google we have moved but don't worry we have moved here"

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Highland
                        Highland last edited by Feb 13, 2012, 4:32 PM Feb 13, 2012, 4:32 PM

                        I would pick #2, where you process .html files with PHP. Changing URLs involves taking a temporary SEO hit and I would not recommend doing it.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • 1 / 1
                        1 out of 11
                        • First post
                          1/11
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        Browse Questions

                        Explore more categories

                        • Moz Tools

                          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                        • SEO Tactics

                          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                        • Community

                          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                        • Digital Marketing

                          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                        • Research & Trends

                          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                        • Support

                          Connect on product support and feature requests.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • AndyKubrin

                          Robots.txt allows wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

                          Hello, Mozzers!
                          I noticed something peculiar in the robots.txt used by one of my clients: Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php What would be the purpose of allowing a search engine to crawl this file?
                          Is it OK? Should I do something about it?
                          Everything else on /wp-admin/ is disallowed.
                          Thanks in advance for your help.
                          -AK:

                          Technical SEO | May 4, 2021, 7:19 PM | AndyKubrin
                          2
                        • ufmedia

                          Recommended log file analysis software for OS X?

                          Due to some questions over direct traffic and Googlebot behavior, I want to do some log file analysis.  The catch is this is a Mac shop, so all our systems are on OS X.  I have Windows 8 running in an emulator, but for the sake of simplicity I'd rather run all my software in OS X. This post by Tim Resnik recommended Web Log Explorer, but it's for Windows only.  I did discover Sawmill, which claims to run on any platform. Any other suggestions?  Bear in mind our site is load balanced over three servers, so please take that into consideration.

                          Technical SEO | Jun 11, 2015, 11:55 AM | ufmedia
                          0
                        • IceIcebaby

                          Is it important to include image files in your sitemap?

                          I run an ecommerce business that has over 4000 product pages which, as you can imagine, branches off into thousands of image files. Is it necessary to include those in my sitemap for faster indexing? Thanks for you help! -Reed

                          Technical SEO | Mar 31, 2014, 11:07 AM | IceIcebaby
                          0
                        • ocelot

                          Duplicate content problem from an index.php file

                          Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks

                          Technical SEO | Jul 2, 2012, 5:40 PM | ocelot
                          0
                        • NaescentAdam

                          Index.php and 301 redirect with Joomla

                          Hi, I'm running Joomla 1.7 with SEF on and I'm trying to do a htaccess redirect which fails. I have approximately 100 in effect so far and all working fine, but I have one snag. Index.php is not working as I need it to when it's redirected to www.myurl.com/ If I turn on index.php redirect to root using this code #index.php to root
                          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myurl.com$ [OR]
                          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.myurl.com$
                          RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.myurl.com/" [R=301,L] And then go to www.myurl.com/test.html I'm redirected to the homepage. I think this is because all pages are index.php in joomla. SEOMOZ and Google both think that index.php and root are duplicate pages. Does anyone have any advice for overcoming this? Thanks, Adam

                          Technical SEO | Aug 18, 2012, 6:53 AM | NaescentAdam
                          0
                        • jeffreytrull1

                          XML Sitemap without PHP

                          Is it possible to generate an XML sitemap for a site without PHP? If so, how?

                          Technical SEO | Oct 7, 2013, 5:00 AM | jeffreytrull1
                          1
                        • mickey11

                          Using symbols in the html title of a webpage

                          If you a symbol in the title of a webpage will this dilute the keywords in the title
                          thus making it rank worse in search engines here is an example <title><br /> Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> versus <title><br /> ▶ Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> will the extra symbols count as words and thus the dilute the effectiveness of the Black Shoe Polish keyword. sort of making like 4 words instead 3. By the way, The reason to use a symbol is to make it stand on in the search engine results

                          Technical SEO | Aug 29, 2011, 4:44 AM | mickey11
                          0
                        • NetPicks

                          How do I redirect index.html to the root / ?

                          The site I've inherited had operated on index.html at one point, and now uses index.php for the home page, which goes to the / page. The index.html was lost in migrating server hosts. How do I redirect the index.html to the / page? I've tried different options that keep giving ending up with the same 404 error. I tried a redirect from index.html to index.php which ended in an infinite loop. Because the index.html no longer exists in the root, should I created it and then add a redirect to it? Can I avoid this by editing the .htaccess? Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

                          Technical SEO | Jun 28, 2011, 4:21 AM | NetPicks
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.