5 replies to this topic

[PVMAA]

Hi:

We're going to rebuild our current static html website in WordPress. My current page names are all simple: www.mysite.com/index.html,
www.mysite.com/aboutus.html, www.mysite.com/services.html and the site's been out for 3 years and is doing well in Google for our key terms, etc.

So I know I can save pages in WordPress as index, and services, and aboutus, but WP doesn't automatically generate a .html extension. I'm assuming that won't matter - that Google will see www.mysite.com/aboutus as being the same as www.mysite.com/aboutus.html but I wanted to be sure.

On the same line, if an extension goes from being .html to .php, but the url is otherwise the same, is it considered the same?

Thanks!

[mickmel]

Google will certainly NOT see those as the same pages. You'll want to setup 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones so google can pass their current link juice to the new ones.

[PVMAA]

Google will certainly NOT see those as the same pages. You'll want to setup 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones so google can pass their current link juice to the new ones.

Okay, so if I can get WordPress to add .html I'm good, but if not, I need to do the 301 redirects?

[mickmel]

Okay, so if I can get WordPress to add .html I'm good, but if not, I need to do the 301 redirects?

Exactly. Either solution would work well.

[PVMAA]

Exactly. Either solution would work well.

Thank you very much!

[torka]

Okay, so if I can get WordPress to add .html I'm good, but if not, I need to do the 301 redirects?

You can get WP to add the .html through your permalinks settings.

For instance, I wanted a .php extension on the end of posts for one of my WP blogs, so I set a custom permalink setting ending with %postname%.php.

With creative use of post categories, tags, etc. and the Structure Tags listed at http://codex.wordpre...sing_Permalinks you can probably set up your new URLs so they match whatever you have now, so you won't have to do 301 redirects at all.

--Torka