Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
HTML entity characters in meta descriptions
Is it okay to leave HTML entity characters, such as " in meta descriptions? Will search engines translate these appropriately?
Technical SEO | | ellenu0 -
How do I complete a reverse DNS check when completing log file analysis?
I'm doing some log file analysis and need to run a reverse DNS check to ensure that I'm analysing logs from Google and not any imposters. Is there a command I can use in terminal to do this? If not, whats the best way to verify Googlebot? Thanks
Technical SEO | | daniel-brooks0 -
Robot.txt : How to block a specific file type in several subdirectories ?
Hello everyone ! I need help setting up a robot.txt. I'm trying to block all pdf files in particular directories so I'm using this command. In the example below the line is blocking all .gif in the entire site. Block files of a specific file type (for example, .gif) | Disallow: /*.gif$ 2 questions : Can I use this command to specify one particular directory in which I want to block pdf files ? Will this line be recognized by googlebots ? Disallow: /fileadmin/xxxxxxx/xxx/xxxxxxx/*.pdf$ Then I realized that I would have to write as many lines as many directories there are in which I want to block pdf files. Let's say I want to block pdf files in all these 3 directories /fileadmin/directory1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1/pdf Is there a pattern-matching rule I could use to blocks access to pdf files in all subdirectories instead of writing 3x the above line for each subdirectory ? For exemple : Disallow: /fileadmin/directory1*/ Many thanks in advance for any insight you may have.
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Rel Canonical, Follow/No Follow in htaccess?
Very quick question, are rel canonical, follow/no follow tags, etc. written in the htaccess file?
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Removing CSS & JS Files from Index
Hi, Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files). I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back. Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux1 -
Sitmap Page - HTML and XML
Hi there I have a domain which has a sitemap in html for regular users and a sitemap in xml for the spiders. I have a warning via seomoz saying that i have too many links on the html version. What do i do here? regards Stef
Technical SEO | | stefanok0 -
Restaurant menu SEO: PDF or HTML?
Is it better to use a PDF or hard code restaurant menus (or any document for that matter) in HTML? I want the content to be indexed and thought PDF was the way to go for several reasons, but I wanted to get confirmation on this before I move forward.
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0