Thanks for all the great input. I fell away for a few days. Man this is going to be some work

The old site has about 500 to 600 pages easy.

I like rwil02 idea about the url_mod_rewrite but does the SE not like to see the rewrites and penelize you. As far as the new php pages go when the site gets pinged again the sitemap should take care of introducing the new pages. I guess the problem will be that the SE won't put together the IBL to my new pages and not give me a high ranking.

James