Converting files from .html to .php or editing .htaccess file
-
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
- Convert .html to .php and 301 redirect
or
- 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
-
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
-
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
-
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 -
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.
-
This is a sweet idea.. any tutorial on this? How does it effect existing links directed at the .html and .php pages?
Thanks Keri!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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"
-
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.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirect chain error free htaccess code for website
i want to redirect domain, example.com to https://www.example.com, is anyone can help me to provide redirect chain error free ht-access code. I implemented this htaccess code on the website and mhy site show on the moz redirect chain error RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=""
Technical SEO | | truehab
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s//+(.)\sHTTP/[0-9.]+$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s(./)/+\sHTTP/[0-9.]+$
RewriteRule .* http://%{HTTP_HOST}/%1 [R=301,L]0 -
Client wants to repackage in-depth content as PowerPoint files and embed on site. SEO implications?
Hi, I've a client who is planning to build out "courses" for their site. Their ultimate goal is to have videos (which will have transcriptions) but since the videos are not yet ready they want to launch with the content in PowerPoint format instead. Thing is, the pages they have now are really good content/in-depth. In short it seems videos are Phase 2, so their Phase 1 preference is to take all their courses content and put them in PowerPoint slides and add them to their web site. While I understand standalone files like PDFs and PPTs can be indexable, my recollection is that embedded slides are not (like SlideShare). Is that correct? My worry is that by taking this content and reformatting it into PowerPoints will hurt their site instead of helping. Any insight is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | CR-SEO0 -
Blogger /blog Folder level redirect setup using .htaccess
We have a blog currently powered by the free blogger.com website. We have set it up as blog.example.com we wish to seti it up as example.com/blog how can we do this using .htaccess file? we understand how to update htacess, but we don't know what code we should enter to achieve what we want our website is hosted on Apache servers with plesk control panel
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
Https and 404 code that goes into htaccess
The 404 error code we put into htaccess files for our websites does not work correctly for our https site. We recently changed one of our http sites to https. When we went to create a 404.html page for it by creating an htaccess folder with the 404 error code in it, once we uploaded the file all of our webpages were displaying incorrectly, as if the css was not attached. The 404 code we used works successfully for our other 404.html pages for our other sites (www.telfordinc.com/404.html). However, it does not work for the https site. Below is the 404 error code we are using for our https site (currently not uploaded until pages display correctly) ErrorDocument 404 /404-error.html RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?privatemoneyhardmoneyloan.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|js|css)$ - [F] Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.privatemoneyhardmoneyloan.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.privatemoneyhardmoneyloan.com/$1 [R=301,L] So we want to know if there is a different 404 error code that goes into the htaccess file for an https vs. http? Appreciate your feedback on this issue
Technical SEO | | Manifestation0 -
SEO changing from Wix Flash too Wix HTML
I have a Wix flash website www.theonlinefloorwarehouse.com.au which is number one in Google search for most of our main products Due to having a large number of changes and the draw backs with flash I pads etc I have rebuilt it in Wix HTML temporarily under this URL www.laminateflooringperth.net.au/ Now I find out Wix uses Ajax technology which most people say is useless for SEO after months of work I do not know weather to switch to the HTML site or not perhaps I should use both sites ? Has any one switched to HTML from Flash, was there a drop in or higher rankings ? Any advice would be greatly appreciated Regards John
Technical SEO | | johnnewson0 -
Converting Old Web Site to Wordpress
I have a website I would like to update and convert to WordPress. My site rates very highly for the keywords I care about and I have a lot of domain authority and page authority that I don't want to lose. I'm concerned about the switch as I don't want to hurt my Google positioning, but would like the benefits of a WordPress site. Any assistance and advice is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | greg.baumgartner0 -
URL change extension to .php from .htm
I am looking at changing the platform of an established (7 years) site to PHP based. Currently most of the URLs have the file extension .htm (“x.com/filename.htm” ) with some URLs being indexed as directory URLs (“x.com/directory/” feeding from “x.com/directory/index.htm”) So I am considering two options A. Changing just file extensions & create 301 redirects, (x.com/samefilename.htm” -> “x.com/samefilename.php”) and for directory URLs (“x.com/samedirectory/index.htm” -> “x.com/samedirectory/index.php”) B. At the same time taking the opportunity to change the file hierarchy to be more user / seo friendly by changing all URLs to directory URLs – this would be a more extensive redirect than just changing the file extension. I am interested in what risks / impact would there be of this and the questions I would like some help with are: Are there any short term risks to rankings with a filename extension change like this? Should an exercise like this be staggered or is it ok to carry out the site-wide change in one go? Does a more extensive filename and structure redirect like in option B above introduce more risk than just changing to the .php extension or would the search engines consider this the same? For the directory URLs do I even need a 301 redirect after changing index.htm to index.php or will the Search engines not even recognise a change (indexed URL will remain the same)? Your opinions on the above questions and any other advice / experience you can share would be much appreciated. Thanks, Adrian.
Technical SEO | | Zilla0 -
Does it matter if browse.php?c= is in product ulrs
Hi Long time reader 1st time questionairer (is that even a word?) Anyway I have started working for a company on a project and as I am in house they obviously throw everything they can at me. Todays question was about the seo friendliness for one of their sites http://www.angellovenails.com/newsite I am going through and finding better keywords for categories and pages. I know that there are pages with 200+ outbound links which need fixing. My question is about the url structure The product on this page is nail feathers, the url is http://www.angellovenails.com/newsite/browse.php?c=angelwingnailfeathers No matter what page of products you go to it includes browse.php?c= For seo purposes is this going to be a problem? I appreciate that we (which means me I think) will be adding content to the pages and the product names could be more keyword friendly. But I have no clue if we need to do something about the browse.php bit or not. Thanks for any help Paul Forcey
Technical SEO | | PaulForcey160