.shtml / .html or .php

Hi

My main site is written in static html and I want to change to have server includes. I have already done this on another site and it works really well.

My questions:

1: Is it better to name the page .php or .shtml or what (you can tell I am new to this !) .shtml works well with the .php includes I have on another site

2: If I convert all my static pages from page.html to page.shtml how do I undertake all the re-directs ?

Thanks

 

In case you are interested, there are ways to effectively "strip" file extensions so that you can change technology [.shtml, .php, etc.] without having to worry about future redirects.

I am on an Apache Server and simply enable "MultiViews." It's that easy.

 

cool - I am on cpanelx - what should I look at?

There's a place called "apache handlers" but I need to type things in

Any ideas ?

 

OK, I've added "Options +MultiViews" into my .htaccess file and a filename "page" will revert to the real filename "page.shtml"

If I type in page.html it returns a 404 which is no good because all my inbound links are to page.html and the pages in google are page.html

Any suggestions ?

 

I'm not familiar with cpanelx. You might not have to make any configurations other than to your .htaccess file.

To enable "MultiViews" you place the code in your .htaccess file as shown below:

RewriteEngine on
Options +MultiViews​

Once you have done this now all you have to do is leave off the extensions in your hyperlinks. For instance:

Instead of -- http://www.mydomain.com/page.html
Use --http://www.mydomain.com/page

To see this in action visit my site.

 

Done that and it works great

BUT

If someone links to me with extension .html (as all my links for the last 3 years) it's going to go to a 404

How do I redirect to all the new pages ?

 

A mod_rewrite would handle all of the redirects. Of course these would be 301 redirects. Not that it matters but how many redirects are you talking about?

 

About 130 pages

All will redirect from page.html to page.shtml

Is there a wildcard I can use ?

 

These redirects should be a snap with mod_rewrite.

I am on my way out. Check around on the forum. When I get back if you don't have the script I'll check into it for you.

 

If you have access to your httpd.conf (and perhaps even through CPanelX), you can enable Shared HTML with the .HTML extension.

Google has been, IMHO, non-performing in it's claim to transfer PR/Relevancy through 301 Redirects.

It is best never to change page names unless absolutely necessary.

 

I've no idea what this means - what would I need to do so that anyone trying to execute page.html actually executes page.shtml and the latter shows up in Google

I know - but needs must..

 

if the only reason you have is to have SSI in your HTML files
then there is NO NEED to change file extension AT ALL !!!

just add in your .htaccess

AddHandler server-parsed htm
AddHandler server-parsed html

i guess you could also write it on one line

AddHandler server-parsed htm html

may be there is even a smarter way using wildcard ?

and your done !! apache will correctly include any SSI from now on

i use it on my own site ;-) since long time

i have however NOT been able to include PHP that way
using
AddType x-mapp-php4 .html .htm

recently and then going away for half a day ...
i had half a day WIN IE surfers being disabled to see my HTML content - only mozilla / netscape users had full access -
so i could NOT include via PHP ( it was an attempt to include RSS newsfeed into an HTML page )

for SSI - zero problem as above !
with one exception all my RSS newsfeed are inserted via SSI into my htm/html pages ! - see my domain / as an example

 

Have you already resolved this issue? If not, bear in mind that the .htaccess redirects are for the directory the .htaccess file is located in. So, are the pages you want to redirect all in one directory or are they scattered throughout?