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

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

    Technical SEO
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    • JohnHerrigel
      JohnHerrigel last edited by

      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

        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

          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

            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 Reply Quote 0
            • Highland
              Highland @JohnHerrigel last edited by

              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

                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 Reply Quote 0
                • KeriMorgret
                  KeriMorgret last edited by

                  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 Reply Quote 0
                  • jpgprinting
                    jpgprinting last edited by

                    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

                      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

                        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

                          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
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