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
-
Add trailing slash after removing .html extention
My website is non www ,it has wordpress in subdirectory and some static webpages in the root and other subdirectory 1. i want to remove .html extention from the webpages in the root and
Technical SEO | | Uber_
the others static webpages in subdirectory.
2. add slash at the end.
3. 301 redirect from non slash to url with slash. so it should be http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles.html to http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles/ and http://ghadaalsaman.com/en/poem-list.html to http://ghadaalsaman.com/en/poem-list/ the below code 1. working with non slash at the end **2. **redirect 301 url with slash to non here's my .htaccess <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /</ifmodule> #removing trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L] #www to non
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(([a-z0-9_]+.)?domain.com)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] #html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L] #index redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://ghadaalsaman.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L] PS everything is ok with the wordpress , the problems with static pages only. Thanks in advanced0 -
Error report in Bing Evaluated size of HTML....
Hi Whilst checking Bing's SEO analyser I got this error message for our page www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases "Evaluated size of HTML is estimated to be over 125 KB and risks not being fully cached. (Issue marker for this rule is not visible in the current view)" Just wondering what needs to be done about it and what it actually means? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
For an image which is in the CSS and not the HTML, can you add an alt tag?
I would like to improve SEO on a page with three big images, which are currently hosted in the CSS. The sample I am working with is at http://xquisitevents.com/about-us/ and I put my cursor over the big picture of the wedding dress with bouquet, I inspected the element and saw this code in a div tag: #upperleft { background-image:url(images/AboutTopLeft.jpg); Can I add an alt tag to the CSS somehow, or can I have it added to the HTML? What is the best way to handle this, to include keywords like exquisite weddings and special event designs?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons0 -
Wordpress Redirect Plugin Vs Manual .htaccess?
Hi everyone, I need to 301 redirect my old pages to new ones but i am confused between whether to choose plugin for this or i should manually rewrite the code on .htaccess file. Please give your suggestion and if you think i should use plugin then which one?
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
HTML Sitemap Pagination?
Im creating an a to z type directory of internal pages within a site of mine however there are cases where there are over 500 links within the pages. I intend to use pagination (rel=next/prev) to avoid too many links on the page but am worried about indexation issues. should I be worried?"
Technical SEO | | DMGoo0 -
301 Redirect on a PDF, DOCX files?
Hi, I have to rename many pdf and docx files. How can I implement 301 redirect on them as they are linked from 'n' number of places? Regards, Shailendra Sial
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner1 -
A script to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess?
I was wondering if anyone could help provide some resources on how to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess. Allow me to explain... I'm building a new website and the primary users are businesses. They have their own profile pages on the site. The URL is based off of their Company Name. In the event that they decided to change their name... reasons being, perhaps they mispelled it the first time, or they're removing LLC or adding Inc, I want to also change the URL and redirect the old URL to the new URL. Since the URL is based off of their Company Name, making a change to the company name would make a change to the URL. I know it doesn't have to work this way, but for our purpose this works best. In case the old URL had any links to it, I wanted to see if there was an way to automatically update an htaccess file with a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Could anyone point me in the right direction of how to do this? Perhaps a sample script. I've done a lot of searches on Google and can't seem to find anything. e.g. Original:
Technical SEO | | bimmer540
Name: XYZ Widgets
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets New - business changes their company name in their profile:
Name: XYZ Widgets, Inc.
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets-inc Upon the user saving the changes in their profile, I'd like to write a 301 redirect to an htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /xyz-widgets http://www.website.com/xyz-widgets-inc I know how to manually write redirects and I've got a pretty smart web developer. We've just never triggered a script to automatically write to an htaccess file before. Is this possible? Any resources are appreciated. Any security risks? Thanks!0 -
Dynamically-generated .PDF files, instead of normal pages, indexed by and ranking in Google
Hi, I come across a tough problem. I am working on an online-store website which contains the functionlaity of viewing products details in .PDF format (by the way, the website is built on Joomla CMS), now when I search my site's name in Google, the SERP simply displays my .PDF files in the first couple positions (shown in normal .PDF files format: [PDF]...)and I cannot find the normal pages there on SERP #1 unless I search the full site domain in Google. I really don't want this! Would you please tell me how to figure the problem out and solve it. I can actually remove the corresponding component (Virtuemart) that are in charge of generating the .PDF files. Now I am trying to redirect all the .PDF pages ranking in Google to a 404 page and remove the functionality, I plan to regenerate a sitemap of my site and submit it to Google, will it be working for me? I really appreciate that if you could help solve this problem. Thanks very much. Sincerely SEOmoz Pro Member
Technical SEO | | fugu0