Instead of doing a 301 redirect, should I do this?

Instead of messing with a 301 redirect and modifying .htaccess files when converting site pages from html to php, would it be a bad idea to simply take down the old html pages, upload the replacement php pages, and setup a custom 404 error page to capture any traffic going to the old pages... ?

Is there dup content issues doing it this way, even though if you taken down the old html pages? There would be a period where the old pages still remain in Google's cache, even if you take them down, so I'm a little unsure about this issue...

 

The new files wont have popularity :s

 

Is that the only issue?

I don't have external links pointing to the inner pages, so that's not an issue.

When the next PR update is to come around, with proper internal linking structure the inner pages will retain Pagerank.

 

You could also just parse .html pages as php and there would be no need to rename the files.

 

I'm not renaming the files, just changing the file extension from .shtml to .php

 

just place this in your .htaccess and you can then run php code on your html pages:

 

Well that is kind of the same, the name still changes

Add what ServerUnion wrote and you won't have to worry about loosing SERPS, PR or get broken links.

 

Cheers guys. I was familiar with ServerUnion's solution, I just want to make all my site pages only .php I feel it look's more professional that way.

 

file extensions have nothing to do with how professional a site looks. Changing your site structure and loosing SERP's will though

 

Each to their own, but I reckon seeing sites which integrate different file extensions looks amateurish. I won't lose any rankings cause I will be keeping the same internal linking structure. I haven't got any external links pointing to the inner pages, so there's no issues there.

 

Any other feedback?

 

You seem to have made you mind up, no reason for anyone to comment more. good luck