does it hurt the ranking if I change html page to shtml page?

[alexandra]

I am now thinking of changing all my html pages to shtml pages(minor changes in content), but I don`t know if the changes will hurt google ranking? Should I make shtml pages first, and then delete the html pages? what if I keep the html pages with shtml pages?

thanks
alexandra

[Marcia]

Yes, it could hurt. I've just seen some site drop like a rock right after making a change just like that. You can have html pages parsed for server side includes with a simple entry in .htaccess without changing the file extension at all. And if you don't have htaccess available just change hosts.

[suggy]

All my pages are .shtml and I am top of the pops for plenty of highly competitive searches. IMHO, Google does not care.

[anallawalla]

Most of my pages are .shtml and some rank #1 for one-word terms.

[Marcia]

Pages are fine with .shtml - no problem at all, never has been. It's making the change that's the problem with that site I mentioned.

Nothing to do with me, I just watched it happen to them. Google had both sets of pages right off, the .htm and the .shtml at the same time; they first all went no description/no title/URL only - and then the site dropped out of existence from great rankings. No idea whether the new pages are "sandboxed" or they got hit for duplicate content, but even the homepage lost its first page rankings, with higher PR on all the pages and more links than most others in that space.

They did a few other silly things too, like using meta-refresh and linking back both with and without the www - but still, if the same file extensions can remain with going with SSI, it's a lot safer. Just MHO.

Yahoo still hasn't caught up with the change, they've still got the old pages indexed with .htm

[esllou]

I went through the same change last autumn and I suffered no problems through Google.

Also, some hosts will not be happy asking all .html pages to be parsed for includes. Mine insisted on me going to .shtml route and leaving the .htaccess out of it.

In the end, I think they were right in protecting their server

[phpmaven]

Marcia is right on about this. Anytime you make a change to the names of your files, even just the extension, you are asking for trouble. You might get lucky like esllou did, but why take a chance? There are so many inexpensive hosting services out there that will let you set things up the way you want, it would be foolish to take the chance IMHO.

[traffik daddy]

You need to create a .htaccess file and save it as a ascii text file and upload it to the directory that you want it to affect. So if you want all of your pages in your entire site to be affected then you would upload the file to your root directory. If you want a sub-directory affected then upload it to that sub-directory and the rest of your site will not be affected.

Make sure these are uploaded in ascii and set the permissions to 644 (rw-r--r--). This will stop people accessing the file on your server.

All text int he ascii file is case sensitive so be aware.

If you want both HTML and HTM to parse server side includes then use the following in your .htaccess

AddType text/html .html
AddHandler server-parsed .html
AddHandler server-parsed .htm

I always start to build my sites using the shtml extensions, it has never done me any harm in the search engines. However, since you are swapping over do not rename all of your page extensions to .shtml as these are considered new pages and will have to get re-ranked whilst your old pages are still cached. The only time you will get away with this is by doing it to your index page as this is picked up by the engines by default. Using this method will save you time, and lots of it.

If your thinking of building on your website and adding new links to your main navigation, or for any other reason then I would urge you to get a .htaccess file so you can execute SSI's on your .html or .htm pages.

I hope this helps
Terry

[Marcia]

Remember that what was true for last fall when everything was "minty fresh" isn't the same thing now with sandboxing of sites, and I don't think we're 100% sure how that's affecting new pages on sites. New file extensions mean brand new pages, and you can cool your heels for a long time with those.

I use some hosting that's cheaper than dirt and I can do anything I please; but if it's an issue, what you can do is only have the html parsed and not the htm or visa-versa - that way there can be pages that don't place any load.

I just had to make a decision with a new site and went with hand rolling .html pages for starters. htaccess will be an option later. What I'm thinking about for when it's bigger is using PHP includes rather than SSI (can't parse html pages for both on the same site, it'll mess up) so that if I can get my head wrapped around using PHP templates in the future there will be more technical flexibilty for the site.

[ebizdude]

so bottom line is html is better than .shtml

Byw thanks for that prasing info on htaacess file

it helped me a lot

love this forum
Thanks :)