Best Redirect for old .htm extention to root ?

[hfranz]

I have been trying to figure this out with different redirects but cannot seem to get this correct. Some of our forums link to pages that do not exist or are very old. They have (.htm) extension. I do not want to redirect the .htm to .php because the actual names of the link have changed too. What is the best code to redirect any link that has a .htm extention to the root domain? right now I have this code to redirect index.htm to the root, but that is all it works for. I think.

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.htm

RewriteRule ^(.*)index.htm$ http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,L]

[blu42media]

<code>This should do the trick :)</code>

<code>RedirectMatch 301 (.*).htm$ /</code>

[hfranz]

when i try that, the website does not load quick. It and when I click on a link it takes forever. But once I remove it, then it is fine.

i tried adding this alone (removing the other code) and i also tried it with the other code.

Any idea why?

[hfranz]

that code actually breaks all my links. Currently all of our links are .php. I just want to redirect old links that have .htm to our home page.

[blu42media]

Okay... let's try adjusting that slightly:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*).htm$ /

Another option, depending on how many .htm pages you need to redirect, is to place this in your .htaccess file in the directory where your .htm pages are located:

<code>RedirectPermanent /oldpage.htm http://www.example.com/</code>

[StalkerB]

Put the whole root domain in

RedirectMatch 301 (.*).htm http://www.example.com/

Works for me

[hfranz]

none of the .htm pages exist. I just noticed a bunch of forums that link to us use the .htm extention. I am assuming these are very old pages. I noticed these links were broken in Google Webmaster Tools. So I want to redirect these old links to our home page. I just want them redirected, because I cant stand seeing these in Google Webmaster Tools. This code redirects every single page on my website now to the root domain.

[RyanKent]

I realize your focus is fixing your .htm issue, but I would like to make one suggestion. Start using friendly URLs which don't show an extension. It should be a win for your site.

[hfranz]

Thanks! How do you name a file without an extention then? Is this done with a CMS ? I did not realize that extentions were bad. Do you think if I would redo our website soon using Wordpress or expression engine, do you think this may help our rankings too ?

[RyanKent]

Wordpress and other software either comes designed for SEO, or has plug-ins which offer SEO abilities.

They work by automating some tasks for you. For example, they can automatically canonicalize pages or use friendly URLs. Any SEO options you set up must be thoroughly inspected. While they do make things easier, I would never treat it as a "set it and forget it". Many people get away with that approach, but others do not.