Convert from .html to .php - What are SEO implications of file name changes?

I am convertig a site that has almost exclusively .html type pages,
i.e. pages I build with NetObject Fusion.

I have discovered the light, and now I am rewriting or converting
those pages to use php.

So the pages I currently have will no longer exist. That is if I now
have a page at http://www.domain.com/apples.html it may soon become
http://www.domain.com/apples or http://www.domain.com/apples.php or
something else similar.

What does this mean for my site and the search engines? I just
started the site about 2 months ago, so I am not high in the search
engines at all. I have been crawled a bit, but I don't think any of
my pages are indexed. My site can be found in Google, and Yahoo, and
MSN.

I was thinking of leaving all of my current pages, with the html
extension, on my site for a while, once I have done the conversion.
Space is not an issue, and there aren't that many pages.

Also I was thinking of redoing the links on the old pages to point to
the new pges. Since I don't have that many old pages on the site,
changing the links to point to new pages won't take long.

Do I need to do leave the old pages out there for the search engines?
Are there any steps I should take to make this process run smoothly?

Thanks for any thoughts.

AF wrote:

I am convertig a site that has almost exclusively .html type pages,
i.e. pages I build with NetObject Fusion.

I have discovered the light, and now I am rewriting or converting
those pages to use php.

So the pages I currently have will no longer exist. That is if I now
have a page at http://www.domain.com/apples.html it may soon become
http://www.domain.com/apples or http://www.domain.com/apples.php or
something else similar.

What does this mean for my site and the search engines? I just
started the site about 2 months ago, so I am not high in the search
engines at all. I have been crawled a bit, but I don't think any of
my pages are indexed. My site can be found in Google, and Yahoo, and
MSN.

I was thinking of leaving all of my current pages, with the html
extension, on my site for a while, once I have done the conversion.
Space is not an issue, and there aren't that many pages.

Also I was thinking of redoing the links on the old pages to point to
the new pges. Since I don't have that many old pages on the site,
changing the links to point to new pages won't take long.

Do I need to do leave the old pages out there for the search engines?
Are there any steps I should take to make this process run smoothly?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Assuming you're on an Apache server, ask your host if they support
parsing of PHP within HTML files.

If so, you would only need to add one line of code into a .htaccess file
and place it in the domain root. Something like >>


AddType x-mapp-php4 .html


That way, you can leave all your pages as .html and any embedded PHP
will still work just fine.

In other words, http://example.com/apples.html *can* contain PHP, when
using the above.

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 22:22:48 GMT, Tony <spamkill (AT) nospam (DOT) net> wrote:

snip

Assuming you're on an Apache server, ask your host if they support
parsing of PHP within HTML files.

If so, you would only need to add one line of code into a .htaccess file
and place it in the domain root. Something like


AddType x-mapp-php4 .html


That way, you can leave all your pages as .html and any embedded PHP
will still work just fine.

In other words, http://example.com/apples.html *can* contain PHP, when
using the above.

Thanks for the quick post.

I think we are using Apache, so I'll try your suggestion if we are.

What happens though if I have a file named apples.php and one named
apples.html?

I don't think I will have too many of these, and since my current site
is relatively small, I have few files with html extensions and thus I
ought to be able to avoid this naming conflict.

I am just curious as to what Apache will do with it.

And while we are on the subject of Apache, .htaccess, etc, are there
other tips of using php and .htaccess that I ought to know about.
This question is obviously not a subject for this group, but I was
just wondering if ou know of any .htaccess tricks I can use to make
php urls look and work better, for seo or otherwise.

Thanks again for the post.
Best regards,

Al
http://www.affordablefloridainsurance.com
http://www.americanbestmortgages.com
http://www.americanaffordablelifeinsurance.com

AF wrote:

What happens though if I have a file named apples.php and one named
apples.html?

If you use the AddType or AddHandler directive in your .htaccess file
so that html files are processed as PHP, then both files will go
through the PHP processor. They are seperate files that will result in
two different web pages, one called example.com/apples.html and the
other called example.com/apples.php

I was
just wondering if ou know of any .htaccess tricks I can use to make
php urls look and work better, for seo or otherwise.

Google for htaccess and one (or several) of these other terms: cloak,
redirect, ban, spider, spam, spoof, and link exchange. There are other
topics I'm sure.

RFM

AF wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 22:22:48 GMT, Tony <spamkill (AT) nospam (DOT) net> wrote:

snip

Assuming you're on an Apache server, ask your host if they support
parsing of PHP within HTML files.

If so, you would only need to add one line of code into a .htaccess file
and place it in the domain root. Something like


AddType x-mapp-php4 .html


That way, you can leave all your pages as .html and any embedded PHP
will still work just fine.

In other words, http://example.com/apples.html *can* contain PHP, when
using the above.


Thanks for the quick post.

I think we are using Apache, so I'll try your suggestion if we are.

What happens though if I have a file named apples.php and one named
apples.html?

Sounds like a design flaw. Publish just one apples page.

If you can use the suggested .htaccess code, stick with .html and link
accordingly.

I don't think I will have too many of these, and since my current site
is relatively small, I have few files with html extensions and thus I
ought to be able to avoid this naming conflict.

I am just curious as to what Apache will do with it.

And while we are on the subject of Apache, .htaccess, etc, are there
other tips of using php and .htaccess that I ought to know about.

This question is obviously not a subject for this group, but I was
just wondering if ou know of any .htaccess tricks I can use to make
php urls look and work better, for seo or otherwise.

If you want to get techy look at mod_rewrite.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

http://tinyurl.com/dsrk4
http://tinyurl.com/dt9lk

If it's a small site I wouldn't worry about it.

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 22:22:48 GMT, Tony <spamkill (AT) nospam (DOT) net> wrote:

snip

Assuming you're on an Apache server, ask your host if they support
parsing of PHP within HTML files.

Tony,

I just reread your post and realized that it did not deal directly
with my original question. since I am a novice at a lot of this,
perhaps I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

If I understand your post, I can use htaccess to have html files
parsed through the php engine on the server.

That is not what I was looking for, although I did not know this could
be done, so your post still taught me something.

Rather my problem is that I have about 200 html files that have been
spidered and hopefully are somewhere in the search engine innards for
searchers to find. How do I keep from losing what little I have
already gained from these pages.

I am converting to using only a few "templates" files written in php
and html. I then link to these templates and pass variables so that
the template php file uses the variables to include other files and/or
to compose a new web page.

Thus

http://www.domain.com/auto/ford/mustang would give me a web page about
msutangs and

http://www.domain.com/auto/toyota/lexus would give me another web page
about lexuses. Both pages were created by using the auto.php file as
a template, and including other files to fill in the data.

Now the problem I have is that I have some legacy pages, all in
straight html. I can leave them on the web if necessary.

What do I do if let's say Google has already spidered a page at this
url http://www.domain.com/mustang.html, and yet my new page for the
same content will have the url
http://www.domain.com/auto/ford/mustang?

how do I handle changing my urls? Should I just leave the old pages
on the web site and change any links that are in these pages to
reflect my new url naming convention?

Thanks again for your post.
Best regards,

Al
http://www.affordablefloridainsurance.com
http://www.americanbestmortgages.com
http://www.americanaffordablelifeinsurance.com

AF <bscinc3000 (AT) Yahoo_NoSpam (DOT) com> wrote:

Rather my problem is that I have about 200 html files that have been
spidered and hopefully are somewhere in the search engine innards for
searchers to find. How do I keep from losing what little I have
already gained from these pages.

301 redirect to the php pages, see RedirectMatch (for Apache)

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

On 15 Jul 2005 03:07:56 GMT, John Bokma <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote:

AF <bscinc3000 (AT) Yahoo_NoSpam (DOT) com> wrote:

Rather my problem is that I have about 200 html files that have been
spidered and hopefully are somewhere in the search engine innards for
searchers to find. How do I keep from losing what little I have
already gained from these pages.

301 redirect to the php pages, see RedirectMatch (for Apache)

I was thinking this but I held back to see what you guys would say.
Can he do a generic or has he got to sit down and do one for each
file?

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ seo (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
seo that watches the river flow...
--

Big Bill <kruse (AT) cityscape (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

On 15 Jul 2005 03:07:56 GMT, John Bokma <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote:

AF <bscinc3000 (AT) Yahoo_NoSpam (DOT) com> wrote:

Rather my problem is that I have about 200 html files that have been
spidered and hopefully are somewhere in the search engine innards for
searchers to find. How do I keep from losing what little I have
already gained from these pages.

301 redirect to the php pages, see RedirectMatch (for Apache)

I was thinking this but I held back to see what you guys would say.
Can he do a generic or has he got to sit down and do one for each
file?

Depends a bit. If he wants to keep some of his html files, it depends on
the URLs. Otherwise it's going to be something like (untested):

RedirectMatch (.*)\.html$ http://example.com/$1.php

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

One side affect you will notice is that google will start double indexing
your pages. I've had google several times double index pages (as different
domain names with same content), and while changing page names (same will
apply for html -> PHP). And be warned about header redirects they can be a
dangerous thing for search engines. Some of the engines will remember say
www.domain.com which says redirects to www.anothersite.com/page as being the
content of www.domain.com. Although this may be fine, it may double index
both a HTML which is your PHP, and your PHP. Does your site have a lot of
inbound links pointing to files other then your http://www.domain.com/? You
could also do the redirect or an alias in your vhost and then slowly contact
your referrers and make sure they have been informed, and then over time the
double indexes will die However you can never be certain how long it
will take google, or other engines to purge there index.

Daryl (Dr. MadCow)

http://www.drmadcow.net
http://www.drmadcow.net/Counter.php
http://www.drmadcow.net/ChangeLog.php

"AF" <bscinc3000 (AT) Yahoo_NoSpam (DOT) com> wrote

I am convertig a site that has almost exclusively .html type pages,
i.e. pages I build with NetObject Fusion.

I have discovered the light, and now I am rewriting or converting
those pages to use php.

So the pages I currently have will no longer exist. That is if I now
have a page at http://www.domain.com/apples.html it may soon become
http://www.domain.com/apples or http://www.domain.com/apples.php or
something else similar.

What does this mean for my site and the search engines? I just
started the site about 2 months ago, so I am not high in the search
engines at all. I have been crawled a bit, but I don't think any of
my pages are indexed. My site can be found in Google, and Yahoo, and
MSN.

I was thinking of leaving all of my current pages, with the html
extension, on my site for a while, once I have done the conversion.
Space is not an issue, and there aren't that many pages.

Also I was thinking of redoing the links on the old pages to point to
the new pges. Since I don't have that many old pages on the site,
changing the links to point to new pages won't take long.

Do I need to do leave the old pages out there for the search engines?
Are there any steps I should take to make this process run smoothly?

Thanks for any thoughts.