[randomdave]

Hi,

I'm about to start website re-design for a client.

They currently have a site with all .asp pages and functionality.

but in a complete overhall, they are now making the server side part of the website completely seperate to the front end (sales) site, which is the one Im dealing with.

Because of this I don't really see the point of having the pages remaining as .asp and would like to redesign the site with with all .html extentions...

Firstly, Will doing this draastically change the SEO and current excellent seachability & reputation on google etc just by changing the extention names?

Secondly if this is a problem I can I simply redo the site and keep the .asp extensions in place, even though there is ZERO .asp code or funtionalitY on the pages. Is there harm in doing this?

I will be creating additional pages to the existing pages on the site...

Any EXPERIENCED advice welcome on this one, as if I tarnish the google searchability for this client I'm in the s*%t!

Thanks,

Dave

[Faevilangel]

You would need to do 301 redirects as Google will be linking to the .asp pages. Just set up a .htaccess (or asp version whatever it's called) and redirect 401 errors to the homepage

[randomdave]

OK thanks.

But shall I do this for the home page ONLY?

You ACTUALLY get directed to the main home page after you finish watching (or skipping) an annoying Splash entry page (Ive talked the client into canning this as the splash page really isnt working for them, if they ever do!)

the home page extention is like this: www.homepage.com/prlogin.asp

All the other pages of the site seem to have the following extentions:

/guest.asp?template=about.html

Would I not be best to do a redirect 301 redirect on the homepage (/prlogin.asp) and then simply recreate all the new pages with .html extentions for the rest of the site? How would this effect the search ability on google etc?

P.S. Im a CSS and HTMLer and am not familiar with other coding languages really

Thanks,

dave

[notbanksy]

randomdave, on 15 March 2010 - 10:17 PM, said:

OK thanks.

But shall I do this for the home page ONLY?

No, you're right. You need to 301 redirect every page to its new equivalent in the new version of the site.

[rallport]

Firsty, redirecting on 401 errors above is rubish advice tbh

Personally, I just use .asp pages (well I wouldn't use classic asp now as its old and rarely used) for the new site. Even if you pages have no asp code it won't matter to a search engine and makes less work for you during developmenjt (includes etc.) and at a later date (E.g. add a news area).

Changing page extension names won't have any impact really, although changing filenames could.

You have a few options.

• Using a htaccess file you could simply rewrite .asp extensions to .html extensions
• Could create a list of old urls from your website and individually 301 them to your new pages

However, if you're making the site again from scratch I'd really look into rewriting your urls, as this has become pretty standard on the web.