Using magentos own url re-writes

[LadyApollo]

We are changing ecommerce platforms.

Is it best to use magentos own url re-writes to redirect every page of a site from its old url to it new one?

[SEOPA]

When you say 'Magento's Own URL Re-Writes" are you referring to their built-in custom URLS at the product and category level? if so, I think you'll need to go a step further than this.

if you're migrating from another platform, will all the URLS be exactly the same? e.g. currently you are at site.com/category/product-example  and you'll use the same structure in Magento? In which case using Magento's re-writes would be consistent --- but again, there may be extra 301s you need to setup. (If the new URL isn't exactly the same you definitely will need to)

We are just starting a project with Magento actually, and I will be investigating a few things. Are you using Community, Pro, or Enterprise?

[LadyApollo]

Yes i did mean 'Magento's Own URL Re-Writes"Our developers have produced re-writes from all our old url to the new ones through the url rewrite management and as we're yet to go live i wanted to check this was the best method.

We are using community to start with as i believe it is not too difficult to upgrade - and there wasn't anything the other packages could offer us that we needed or couldn't get from an extension. However i'm eagerly awaiting the release of xcommerce to see what that brings and whether there's a migration path.

I've been very happy so far with its magentos versatility. We have opted for quite a few tweaks especially when it comes to its order processing which is longwinded to say the least.

We are also loosing the .html after advice from the guys here and opting for only the /lastcategory/productname and the /thelastcategory  for the url structure.