Removing File Extension Via htaccess

Hello,

I want to know experts opinion about whether its good to remove the file extension from the URL? lets say i have a php page mysite.com/a.php I want to remove ".php" I know its possible with htacces, my question is will that help in SEO?

Regards-
Pathan

 

sorry i m deleting

 

Yes, you can rewrite file extensions using a few lines of coding in your .htaccess file. Be sure to read the mod_rewrite FAQ and these .htaccess tips and tricks and also make certain that your website is hosted on an Apache server with mod_rewrite enabled. However, from an SEO point of view it is not worth the time and effort you put into it unless you have a large website with various directories and subdirectories.

 

Thanks for your reply, well I have tested it on my server yeah its working as I am having Linux server, and regarding the SEO point of view I m thinking to use it on my new websites as I know its really hard to edit my existing sites pages.

 

One more question raised in my mind can i do that on few of the directories?

 

Yes.
.htaccess affects its own directory and further subdirectories.
so u can make the .htaccess file to affect a few directories only

 

ahan thats really cool, will give that a try for sure, between I still want to know about is this effective in term of SEO?

 

This works for a person that asked the same question. http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3371997.htm

RewriteEngine on
#
## Internally rewrite extensionless file requests to .php files ##
#
# If the requested URI does not contain a period in the final path-part
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[^./]+)$
# and if it does not exist as a directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# and if it does not exist as a file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# then add .html to get the actual filename
RewriteRule (.*) /$1.php [L]

Code (markup):

 

extensions don't make any difference but its good to remove them so in the future, if you even move the platform, you can avoid lot of trouble