Permanent Redirecting & The .htaccess File

[madjohn]

Hi all!
I hvae been using 301 redirects for all my old pages but have since found the power of the .htaccess file.

Can I now dispense with my 301 HTML redirects since the .htaccess will handle this for me? What will the SEbots 'say' about that?

Also, in my browser, the address of the redirected page is remaining as the old address;
e.g. www.mydomain.com/contact.htm (old page) does not change to www.mydomain.com/contact.php (new page).

And finally, I am on a Linux Web Server and so my directories that use capital letters need to be typed into the address bar using the exact syntax. So if you typed in www.mydomain.com/Contact.htm instead of www.mydomain.com/contact.htm the page would not show.
How do I use the .htaccess to overcome this?

If there is a resource website I could visit to find the answers that would be cool too!

[jgarner]

Hey John,

I would do your best to handle the 301's through the .htaccess file. It take precedence over your HTML versions, and the bots treat it so.

As for the URLs not reflecting, is this done in the .htaccess?

And I know there is a way to play with caps in .htaccess, but if you don't have a big, giant site (like microsoft.com or ibm.com) take the lazy route and just redirect that too.

While you're in there playing with your .htaccess, go ahead and make the decision on www. vs. no www. and trailing slashes. Might as well get that out of the way.

[Jean-Luc]

I hvae been using 301 redirects for all my old pages but have since found the power of the .htaccess file.

Can I now dispense with my 301 HTML redirects since the .htaccess will handle this for me? What will the SEbots 'say' about that?

Also, in my browser, the address of the redirected page is remaining as the old address;
e.g. www.mydomain.com/contact.htm (old page) does not change to www.mydomain.com/contact.php (new page).

Your message is confusing.

You speak about your "301 HTML redirects": this doesn't exist. You have either 301 redirects or HTML redirects, but not both at the same time.

If the address in the address bar is remaining the old address, you don't have a 301 redirect, nor have an HTML redirect.

Jean-Luc

[activeco]

Hi all!
I hvae been using 301 redirects for all my old pages but have since found the power of the .htaccess file.

You would be even more surprised of the power of http configuration files. .htaccess is recomended to use only if you don't have full access to your server.

Also, in my browser, the address of the redirected page is remaining as the old address;
e.g. www.mydomain.com/contact.htm (old page) does not change to www.mydomain.com/contact.php (new page).

It depends of the rewriting way you used to do it.

And finally, I am on a Linux Web Server and so my directories that use capital letters need to be typed into the address bar using the exact syntax. So if you typed in www.mydomain.com/Contact.htm instead of www.mydomain.com/contact.htm the page would not show.
How do I use the .htaccess to overcome this?

e.g.:
RewriteRule ^([^A-Z]*[A-Z].*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/${lowercase:$1} [R=301,L]

but under condition that your httpd.conf has lowercase function enabled: RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower

If there is a resource website I could visit to find the answers that would be cool too!

Sure: Apache mod_rewrite , but you could probably find some more easier to follow mod_rewrite manual on the web.

[spiderbait]

My favorite resource for .htaccess is the following site:

.htaccess Help - 10 Best .htaccess Tutorials

Hope it helps.

[madjohn]

Thanks all!

As for the URLs not reflecting (the change from .htm to .php), is this done in the .htaccess?

I think so, but how?
The link spiderbait posted (thanks, by the way) shows how to change all files so they can look a certain filetype but does it matter to SEO if I do that, since most are .htm?

And I know there is a way to play with caps in .htaccess, but if you don't have a big, giant site (like microsoft.com or ibm.com) take the lazy route and just redirect that too.

Yeah, my site is not huge but there are enough pages to redirect that it's time to start to use the .htaccess rather than the HTML redirects I have been using (and not 301 HTML redirects as I described earlier - thanks Jean-Luc ) and thus there are enough pages that I would rather just change case (as shown by activeco - thanks!) than have to employ a redirect on each one..!

You would be even more surprised of the power of http configuration files. .htaccess is recomended to use only if you don't have full access to your server.

I would? Cool. But what is that..!? I take it my webspace provider would tell me if I have full access...?