converting from *.html to *.php

tactics to avoid 404's when Users use search engines

[webwannabee]

I am converting a 210 page site from hand coded pages to a database driven platform.

Trouble is, the site is 4 months old and gets 20K uniques, mostly organic traffic from search engines.

Any suggestions regarding damage control as far what's gonna happen to all those 404's people are going to get when I make the switch?

Is it possible to keep the *html in a database driven platform?

Thanks

[jdMorgan]

Simple answer: Don't change the URLs. Instead, use Apache mod_rewrite or IIS ISAPI Rewrite to tell the server to get the content for the old URL from the new (database-access-script) server filepath.

Jim

[LifeinAsia]

You should also be able to configure your web server to use PHP to parse .html files.