how to convert static to dynamic...?

[simonwheatley]

301 redirects will provide you with the best (but not guaranteed) chance of retaining SE & link juice if you NEED to move a page. If you don't need to move the page, then keep the existing URLs.

If you're converting pages to use PHP, I recommend using the methods described above (by DrTandem amongst others) to force Apache to treat pages with a .html extension as PHP files. This means you'll get the advantages of a dynamic file, but keep the current page rank with SEs and inbound links. Your URLs don't change.. everyone wins!

[pagetta]

great thanks simon!
luckily for me i'm off on holiday for 3 days now so i get a nice break before getting on with all this work!

[seomagnet]

Hello,

Here is real code that I use thoughout our sites.

.htaccess

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

ErrorDocument 401 http://www.site.com/error/401.html
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.site.com/error/403.html
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.site.com/error/404.html

Also, The first part of this can be a bit time consuming but is much easier and faster that using a cms for the most part. And since just about all hosts have a file manager of sorts, site wide changes can be done in a few simple steps.

The sections that you edit the most, you can put that html into a file and use a php include throughout your site. 90% of my site is plain html but I have a right side bar that shows some info along with some links. So if I want to add a link or info, You just edit one file either offline and upload it or you can do it in a file manager.

Another thing too. Most people seem to either use a CMS or they don't. But honestly, it can take a whole 10 minutes to throw together a simple mysql database to hold content for a ever changing section. A very simple admin with add / edit / update can which basicly just allows you to edit a block of content is simple to write and easy to use.

While you may not need a full blown cms, you can still make things easier on yourself with a simple solution.

Anyway, Just a thought,
Chris

[dbramley]

I've used a CMS system (Article Manager) from Interactive Tools - www.interactivetools.com.

The item I love about this product is that it allows you to name your pages whatever you want, and give them whatever file extension you like.

So its a fully fledged CMS system for easy site wide updating, with the benefit of being able to keep your existing page names and extensions.

[seomagnet]

Hello,
Very true.. And interactivetools has a lot of great products as well as a huge userbase. Article Manager and the Real Estate software are very popular.

Chris

[WebMasterKrames]

By changing the htaccess as stated above and using simple php includes you should be able to have a dynamic site but the html that SE's see is identicle to the html that was there before the web site was dynamic. So if you do it right, SE's shouldn't know the difference.

If you are really paranoid about your page rank, I would reccomend this over doing redirects.

[Shane]

A number of folks have previously addressed a number of ways to make sure changing the format of your webpages doesn't hurt your organic SERPs.

I think it is important to bring up, changing from static to dynamic, when done correctly, should have a huge positive impact on your pages regardless of their extension. You can use that dynamic ability to populate titles and METAs that are page specific automatically on the fly. This results in page specific SEO techniques that typically do better in visitor to conversion statistics and that is what truely matters, not that you get 1,000 visitors a day, but how many of those 1,000 convert into sales (or whatever your goal is on your site, perhaps lead generation)?

A good example of this can be seen on a client site I did the back end for: http://ElectricMotionCompany.com
The keyphrases that bring them new visitors are as varied as the products they carry. Just search google for one of their products or categories, 90% of them rank #1 if not #1-#4.

Not to mention the ease of updating a single file to make site-wide changes is a beautiful thing!

[langsor]

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.

Since you asked,

I don't know how the SEs handle 301s but as someone mentioned, if you're really concerned (as with your main product page), you can use the .htaccess You might use a combination depending on the page in question.

I agree that DrTandem's solution is elegant, but do consider that parsing PHP takes up more server overhead than serving static pages. So if you have mixed static/dynamic content to publish, you might handle the pages individually.

The overall goal should be to migrate to a system that does not require a lot of hand holding. So using 301 redirects for content that does not currently rank well (at least) will probably be the way to go.

Finally, mod_rewrite has a bad reputation, and it can be kind of complicated even if you're a regular-expression pro...but there are some great tutorials online and Apache has its own (however you might want to start with someone's generic tutorial and then look up the specifics on Apache's tutorials--just a thought). Once you get past the learning curve it's not too tricky.

Apache documentation

Apache examples

Good luck, and post back here if you get stuck...

[tj-rie]

What do you all think about using an iframe tag for dynamic content? This way you can intersperse dynamic stuff only where needed without having to send all pages to the php processor.

<iframe  SRC="http://www.mysite.com/dynamicstuff.php" NAME="float1" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="100" ALIGN="right">
You will not see this text if your browser supports IFRAME. If you CAN see this you need to get a new browser!
</iframe>

[pagetta]

thanks langsor wil have a read through those links - i do need to brush up on my htaccess knowledge so will be a good learning opportunity.

have a nice weekend everyone i'm off to wales :-)