Simple Mod_Rewrite help please

Simple question,

What 'exactly' do I put into my .htaccess file in order to get URL1 to change to URL2.

URL1: www.sitename.com/file.php
URL2: www.sitename.com/file.html

NOTE: I don't want to do this sitewide. I'm just after the code to do this on a single page.

And then I just need to go back and change all my internal links so they point to the "file.html" right?

Thanks so very much

-Complete n00b.

 

Options +Indexes
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^file\.html$ file.php [L]

Then change links to .html.

 

So in order to multiple rewrites in the same .htaccess file do I just repeat the line "RewriteRule ^file\.html$ file.php [L]" (inserting the URL that I want to change from PHP to HTML) or do I need to turn the Engine on and do all that every time?

Thanks so much Nintendo!

 

Only add

RewriteRule ^file\.html$ file.php [L]

for each file.

If it's every file like that

RewriteRule ^([^.]+)\.html$ $1.php [L]

 

Anything else I should do special for the root besides changing index.php to index.html? (www.sitename.com)

Also what about duplicate content issues? Should all of the PHP extensions be 301'ed to the HTML versions? If so, what is the correct syntax there?

Thanks so much Nintendo!

 

You only want one URL for each page!!

You don't have to change the actual file name at all, only the links.

Do you currently link to the php URLs?

 

The site isn't live yet and so I have freedom to change anything.

So I just changed all of my links to go to the HTML pages instead of the PHP pages. BUT the PHP pages can still be accessed if somebody typed them in or linked to them.

If a say a competitor linked to my PHP pages instead of HTML they could create a duplicate content issue for me. So what should be done?

 

If you only link to .html URLs, no one will ever know you have .php files, unless you use forms that generate php URLs.

 

I do have one php "rating" script that I wrote. Users enter form info and then I display it, but I am having trouble with this and the mod_rewrite. Anything special that needs to be done when using the mod_rewrite and php forms?

 

Search engines don't use forms/click buttons, so it'll never find those URLs from there, and I have yet to ever hear of a competator of any site hunting for and linking to a non mod_rewrite URL. They got more importent stuff to do.