preserving links home page

[pokerbull]

I am changing my home page from index.html to index.php. However, I have many links that point to index.html. What's the best way to preserve the link power from these links? If I do some sort of redirect, will the search engines transfer the link power from the .html page to the .php page? Thanks.

[jonrichd]

If you're on an apache server, put an entry in your .htaccess file that says

RewriteRule /index.html /index.php [L]

That rule says, whenever someone requests index.html, serve index.php, but don't make the switch in files visible to the browser.

Then continue using index.html in all of your on-site links. Don't switch to index.php, or you could run into duplicate content issues.

There's more good info on URL rewriting here [webmasterworld.com].

[sugarrae]

I'd suggest redirecting to the / --- i.e. http:*//www.yourdomain.com/ (remove the star of course) so that no matter what format you use for the index page, the links are all going to the root.

[pokerbull]

Thanks for both of your help. Does it matter if I include the trailing slash on [*mydomain.com...] I sometimes have these on some of my incoming links, and sometimes not. Does it affect anything?

[jatar_k]

why not just have the html extension parsed for php, the you don't need to change the extension at all

[pokerbull]

I tried the parsing method. When I seached google for the commands to do this in htaccess, I got two different ways:

one site recommended this command:
AddHandler cgi-script .html

another site recommended this commmand:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html

Does anyone know which of the above is correct for parsing html as php?

[jatar_k]

the AddType should be fine

there are tons of thread around about it [google.com]