Converting asp site to .NET

[kmayer]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this question or not, so please let me know if it should go elsewhere. We have a client with an established ecom site. It is being upgraded from legacy asp to .NET, so file extensions and url's will change at the very least from product.asp to product.aspx. What is the best way to handle? find all current indexed url's and do 301 redirects to the new url?

[hal12b]

There is a lot to consider here. If they have pages ranked in the search engines or other websites link to them, affiliates, there can be a serious impact (loss of traffic/sales/ etc..)

I would really ask if it needs to be upgraded first. If so, tread lightly. I am sure it is more than just renaming file extensions for the most part. If there is a shopping cart in place, it may need to be replaced.

[kmayer]

The site did need to be upgaded and now has been. We have not yet made it live though. So really the question is what steps do we need to take to minimize the negative impact of the new page names.

[scooterdude]

A IIS 7 server can be configured to read .net code from .asp files, no need to use .aspx

[haggul]

As scooterdude says you can configure IIS to treat .asp page requests as .net - in fact we did this already on s site.

However it can then be a pain for the developer as the usual tools (Visual Studio etc) isn't as helpful if the file extension isn't what it expects.

I'd think about creating .asp 301 redirection pages - I did this with a migration from PHP to ASP a while back and it seemed to work just fine

[kmayer]

Thanks for the info. I think asp redirection pages are the way to go. What is the best way to determine which asp pages are indexed and need the redirection?

[haggul]

To be honest unless you have a ready made list from analytics etc I'd go with gut feel - home / category / product pages of course should be pretty frequent landing pages both from SERPS and external links.

[creativeedg10]

Is the redirect the best practice to cover the ASP to .NET issue? Will performance of a site be effected by the mixing of these two language types?