[roto]

I have been scarce here lately because I am upgrading 300+ sites to use a new PHP-based Content Managment System. When I'm done, this should (hopefully) give me a bit more free time during work hours for DT ...always thinking ahead.

During this update to the PHP-based Content Managment System, an issue arising is individual pages of the site(s) that previously ended in .html AND are listed on the search engines are now returning a "Page Not Found/Fatal Cock Up" because of the new .php ending. Clients are concerned...yeah...what else is new?

I know it's not long until search engines index the site(s) and find the new PHP pages. However, I DO NOT want to have to put up .html pages with redirects to the new .php pages for every page of every site being updated. That would be a NIGHTMARE and double CMS's implemenation time.

Has anyone faced this dilemna? Is there a way to ease the transition so that requests for old .html pages don't return a "Page Not Found/Fatal Cock Up"? Even if it's just a redirect to the domain itself...it's better than losing a vistor. Maybe there is a server side setting? If you need more server specifics to better answer my question, let me know.

Reply , PM, or e-mail roto-at-homegrownclone.com if you can offer help/suggestions.

ALL HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED...THANKS!

[smallbeer]

Appache's mod_rewrite is your friend here. Try something like this in an .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html$ /$1.php [R=301]

Otherwise ask over at sitepoint. They know their geek shit.

[Bill Posters]

'nother easy speak link about mod rewrites:
http://www.fluidthoughts.com/howto/mod_rewrite/

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For pages and/or directories that have completely relocated you may need to implement 301 redirects (they being the most friendly way to tell SEs that your page/directory/site has permanently moved).

[roto]

Thanks to you both...BIG help.

[press711]

just one more thing often certain searh engines will not cache your page if it seems to have GET parameters attached to it...

Maybe it is a good idea to also have a special field in your CMS where you enter a page html name .. next youcan setup your apache to pattern match page requsts of *.html e.g somepage.html can be redirected to pages.php?htmlid=somepage

Ofcourse it is a case of you adding this extra bit of information for pages which you have already added.

[roto]

No get parameters, but thanks for the input. To make the update easy, the system is programmed to update .html to .php (for each file on the server and in all code). It also generates the proper .htaccess file into the root with the 301 redirects written for each page changing to .php. It's working well so far...47 sites to go.