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

[JohnHerrigel]

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

2. 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

[Highland]

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.

[kdaly100]

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"

[SteveGerencser]

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.

[jpgprinting]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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]

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]

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.

[donford]

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]

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

[donford]

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