I have a static, HTML site doing well, about to move to dynamic.

.htm to php. What's need to preserve ranking?

[sandpetra]

I'm just about to move my high ranking static pages to php and drastically change the site.

Can I have an index.php as well as a index.htm on my site, so I can build the site on the server and then just 301 redirect index.htm to index.php when it's ready and then delete?

I'm also thinking of for the transition at least to try and keep the navigation pages named the same as well as keeping the navigation anchor text the same.

Would this be the right way to do this, do you think?

Any tips? As I mentioned I do pretty well in Google but I want to change my site into a more content managed site. I'm using Joomla.

[Patrick Taylor]

The way I think you are describing this, your site is going to have mostly new URLs - pretty drastic in terms of existing rankings. Do you really need to do it? You are more or less starting again, and you will need to find a way to deal with all your existing indexed URLs.

With index.php as well as index.htm (but not index.html), by entering only the domain name, in my experience the browser will display the contents of index.php. For a homepage, many recommend just the domain with no index file in the URL - the same with subfolders:

www.domain.com/
www.domain.com/subfolder/

But you can still open both an index.php and an index.htm by typing in the address or linking to each address.

Is this thread relevant? -> [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Patrick_Taylor at 10:05 pm (utc) on Jan. 24, 2007]

[tedster]

You can set up a server to parse .html extension files as php. That could help a lot.

[webmasterworld.com...]

There are many other threads here on the topic - a site search turns up over 1,000.

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

On a related issue. Many folks who change from static to dynamic also change from HTML to XHTML. I've seen reports of folks having Google ranking problems when they have changed from HTML 3.2 to XHTML and CSS (both static and dynamic). Is this still an issue or has Google come into the real world.

Cheers

Sid

[ciscoforum]

mod_rewrite :)

[soulful house]

I've programmed for myself in PHP a simple database-based frame so that I can maintain old page names for rebuilding websites, saving big time and effectively maintaining rankings....even outperforming them if the layout is cleaner.

[wheelie34]

or has Google come into the real world

Could be, last saturday (7 days ago) I completely changed a PR5 site, had to, it was a mix of php and html and folders and files all over the shop, it grew out of control in other words. Relatively small in size 80 odd pages.

This is the process I took (after reading here of course) I knew it was bad move but neccessary.

Completely built new site on spare domain first

Created 301 from old page to new pageORcategory for every single URL I couldnt do a mod_rewrite as it would have taken ME longer than the 301's

While creating the htaccess file I did the non www to www, index.php to / and the 404 just incase

Last Saturday morning, did a final check, deleted whole old site and uploaded new version with .htaccess, re-created G sitemap and told them to fetch it again.

This morning checked G sitemaps for errors, had 1, they wanted the site verifying again (could be coincidence as a few other sitemap sites have asked in the past for re verifying) chose meta verifying version, uploaded index.php verifyed OK, ran site: from within sitemaps and ALL new pages are indexed, and a few suplimentals, traffic over the week has been higher than average, added the sup URL's to the htaccess.

YMMV

[Hissingsid]

Hi wheelie34,

I'd be very grateful if you could keep us informed on how your site does in a few weeks time.

Thanks for the information.

Sid

[wheelie34]

Will do sid, as we know, I just missed the last PR update so will have to wait a while to see what gets passed over, if anything, theres a few threads here saying it wont.

Will monitor traffic for a while too as I expect a drop sometime soon, if it doesn't I'll be quite chuffed.

[fjpapaleo]

repeat: "mod_rewrite" Read in the apache forum.