redirect help, will it affect my rankings?

I am coverting my pages from .html to .php... and I need help on redirecting... some people said something about 404 redirect... how do you do it? also how will this affect my rankings? thanks

 

301 redirect is the most search engine friendly method for webpage redirection.

If you are using Apache http server, and your html files are located in the document root directory, you may try to add something like:

to your .htaccess file.

 

how do i redirect the html page to the php page... i have little to no knowledge of .htaccess

 

Are you using the Apache HTTP-server?

 

You need a 301 permanent redirect .

Open htaccess file - this file is usually located in your document root.
If the file is not present, then create one.

Open the file and write the following code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ ($1).php [R=301,L]

The above code will work provided you have already converted all the .html extension into .php

 

Don't bother redirecting them. Just use htaccess to make them parse and behave like php pages.
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .html

 

If you don't want to affect your pagerank, then a 301 redirect is what you are looking for. You can easily perform one with a .htaccess file.

Otherwise, use a temporary 302 redirect if this is just a temporary thing.

Anyway, mad4's suggestion here above is great