how to convert static to dynamic...?

[lpoulsen]

We are about to do the same thing, and had many of the same concerns. After some research, we are now determined that we will move to the Joomla CMS using the OpenSEF extension to keep the page names Search Engine Friendly. This will allow us to retain the exact same external URLs for all existing pages.

[jtracking]

I am unsure about converting to php as our main product pages that currently do well in the 3 major SEs are all .html pages and I am worried about the effect changing to php may have on these - although i know using the htaccess i can redirect and eventually these pages would perform wel in their own right, would this be worth the short term loss of rankings (or am i totally off the mark with that assumption?)...thankyou

When I changed my site over to php for the same reasons you did I found that I did quite better in the SEs. I converted all my pages to php pages without using the .htaccess file (sorry) and I still did better...

There must be SO MUCH to consider when trying to work the the search engines and I must say that honesty always works best for me. : )

[imvain2]

Sorry if it sounds like a sales pitch. Having once been a Post Nuke User for more than 4 years, I have, unfortunately, had very poor luck with .htaccess files, mod_rewrite, etc and found what has resulted as a much better way for me.

Mike
http://www.bestplainwebpages.com

I apologize for assuming it was a sales pitch, just sometimes with first time posters and some of the wording, it sounded like a sales pitch.

Anyways, for my suggestion, the server will treat html/htm files as PHP files so the content can be edited via a DB but the file names will never change.

[bj]

Two of the dynamic programs I work with, ModX and wordpress, allow you to create a site structure pretty much exactly like what you have, if you're clever.

You can also just do your pages using php includes and use the .htaccess trick. I use it on the few static pages I have (which run php but are extension .htm)

[activeco]

There are always some ways to find out if files are static or dynamic (e.g. checking etag headers, although this could be faked too), but fortunately it seems not important today.
I like jtracking's reply, so I have to repeat it:

I must say that honesty always works best for me.

[bj]

Honesty is one thing. Inbound links are another. If you can dupe the site structure, it really is the best option. If you can't then you need to redirect so you don't lose traffic and SERPS. I'm sure there's the odd exception, but not doing so is generally not healthy for SE position.

[DrTandem1]

Depending on your host, you can add this line to a .htaccess file:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html

You can then add PHP code to existing HTML/HTM pages and they will be parsed as if they are PHP pages.

[LinksAndTraffic]

I had to do this on one of my sites that had over 3000 pages.

I converted the static pages by spider and by hand to a mysql database.

Next, I wrote php software to serve up the same pages in the same fashion that they were originally served up. Then, I set a RewriteRule in the .htaccess file that would in essense take the identifying info from the original url path and use that to pull the same content from the php/mysql system.

The search engine sees the exact same url it has always seen, but now the page is being served through php, templates and mysql.

Now, when I want to change the layout of my pages, I change one template file instead of 3000 static pages.

All pagerank and seo value was retained, and I received a system that will let me be a bit more flexible in the future.

It was painful to move the pages from the static to the database, but it has been worth every minute spent doing so in regards to expanded features to share with my visitors.

[simonwheatley]

On topic:
I agree with what many people have said above, keep the URLs where at all possible (as as people have pointed out, it is possible so don't take no for an answer from any contractors) and use 301 (permanent) HTTP redirects to inform SEs and human visitors that pages have moved permanently.

I agree with LinksAndTraffic, having your pages in a centrally managed dynamic system will be worth every minute you spend making it happen.

Wandering off the track a little:
I understand that SEs used to have a big problem with dynamic sites because it meant that they could get stuck indexing almost infinitely deep levels of content due to badly designed navigation. In those (bad old) days, their crawl capacity was a lot less than it is now, so that was a concern. Accordingly they reduced the crawl rate for dynamically generated sites and/or didn't go that deeply into them. This may have been compounded by dynamic sites being slower to respond, and so slowing the crawl further.

(Fast forward to now.)

I believe that current SEs, certainly the majors, do not have a problem with "dynamic looking" URLs. So pretending your .php pages are .html pages is not necessary to avoid "dynamic" penalties.

However...

(As other posters have said.) The major issue here is to keep the same URL structure, or at the least to use 301 HTTP redirects.

What does an ideal URL look like... a discussion for another day, perhaps? I will quickly note that when you're planning your site, you should design your URLs to be technology neutral. What does that mean? That means that they look like this: http://www.example.com/some/article/. (Note the lack of a file extension.) In this way, whenever you do switch technology, from HTML static pages to PHP, or ASP to Java, or whatever, you don't have to mess with your site URLs. Plus human visitors (apart from web geeks) don't care about what tech you're using, they care about using your site... it's just 4 more characters which might be typo'd when someone enters one of your URLs manually.

More on the ideal URL:
http://robert.mathmos.net/webtips/urls[/b]

[pagetta]

Thanks for all your responses they have really given me some food for thought!. having spoken to the other web site manager in our group of companies I have decided that a CMS would not be the way forward as due to certain factors in our company it is better for us to have full control over our code.

I think the way forward for me will be to put sections of the site into separate php files and then get myself some serious htaccess tutorials on the go!

There are a couple of options in these replies - can anybody tell me if it is better to use 301 redirects or a rewrite of the file names? Dr tandem your mthod sounds like it might be a simple way to add php functionality to our site.

In terms of the url structure i have recently changed all internal and what external links i can so that the structure is www.mysite.com/productname/ however our leading product page which performs well in all SEs has a full filename URL it is this page that worries me in changing to php.

thanks again