Changing from IIS to LAMP

Any tips on preserving search engine perfromance?

[visibot]

We're looking at the pros and cons of moving from Microsoft IIS running .asp to a LAMP environment. Without going into details there are enough compelling reasons related to our specific scenario to consider this move.

There is little or no actual .asp programming on the current site that we need to duplicate on the current site. For the most part it's a static site that happens to be .asp. We're about to make it a dynamic site so it seems like a reasonable time to choose our preferred development environment.

I'm not well-versed in the technical aspects but the developer feels that they can address my concerns, most of which are related to preserving search engine performance. We have around 250 pages that have a firm footing in Google, etc. and we get a steady flow of traffic through those pages.

I've read some of the threads about moving a site to a new server, and feel comfortable with that scenario, but changing platforms seems like a double whammy to me.

I'm told that in the LAMP environment we can continue to serve up the old .asp file names so as to preserve our current search engine foothold. However, if feasible I'd like to replace those with .php pages over time.

1. Is this true?

2. Are there other factors I should be aware of in planning this transition?

3. Any other red flags that our developer should address?

[visibot]

4. Am I even asking the right questions or do I need to frame the issue differently?

[seindal]

I know next to nothing about your old platform, but there is not problem in serving .asp files from Apache. There are generally no magic file extensions on Linux, so it doesn't matter what you call the files. Just tell Apache that .asp files are to be handled by whatever content handler you like. It could be static files, perl, php, whatever.

There even is an ASP module for Apache, so you could continue using ASP. There is no VBscript, though, so it is an ASP framework with perl embedded.

Personally I would highly recommend mod_perl and HTML::Mason as a development platform for making dynamic sites under Linux, but there are a million other possibilities. PHP is a perfectly valid choice.

René.

[visibot]

Thanks Rene' - that's reassuring.

[martin]

AddType application/x-httpd-php .asp in httpd.conf

although I would recommend dropping extensions at all.

[dingman]

I'd keep the extentions for one simple and frivolous reason - my editor will automatically activate various dedicated editing modes, which are very useful, based upon the extention of the file it is asked to load. Its a convenience I greatly enjoy.