Last year I redirected hundreds of static HTML files to their new PHP equivalents using .htaccess. This year I have the opposite problem – how do I redirect hundreds of dynamically generated PHP pages to static html?
Since all the search engines have the full URL paths to the PHP pages in their index, I figure rather than go the rewrite route, I’ll just leave the PHP pages up and let them continue to function fielding queries as before.
Over time, Google, Bing and all the rest will eventually replace the PHP links anyhow because they no longer back link to the site and should drop off (at least that’s the theory). So how’s it working so far?
Unfortunately, there’s been a bit of a hit on traffic with this approach as all those new html pages don’t have the same weight as their old PHP equivalents. Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised by the drop – (seen this before) and if the past is any indication of what to expect, this is probably going to take many months for things to get caught up with the search engines. Oh well, such is the price of “progress” (and the promise of a reduced server load. 😉