From ASP to PHP

[barrym67]

Hi Guys

I am moving my site to a new hosting platform, all my pages in the free area are .asp, not that it really is that important I can change them to anything really apart from my home page that has a "Number Of Users Online" script on it, which I am sure I can replace with some other code and thus change the file extension.

The question is, if I change my home page extensions from .asp to something else, will it affect my search engine ranking/placing or does the extension of the page not make a difference? I am told that I should change over to PHP. I converted my index page in Dreamweaver from .asp to .php and it loaded/previewed fine on my local-host browser. Is this all I have to do, is just save them with the new extension (making sure that all the links are changed as well of course). Should I use .php or could I simply just use .html, what is the difference, is .html just old fashioned now?

Then if I change the file extensions on my pages I also suppose that any other links to my site to any of my other pages will then become void seeing that the extension has been changed? Is this correct? (Sorry if this seems dumb to you, I would not ask if I did not know.)

The reason that I am changing is that my hosting company SUCKS big time, and also my technical helper has left the site and I am having to replace what he did (and what he was supposed to do) with software, like the automation of the payment section with 2Checkout and my members area. Then I also need to have a shopping cart and a lot of these software packages want a unix/linux based platform or rather a platform with IonCube loaded.

I am so not quite sure what to do and I would just like some feedback and advice thank you so much.

Regards

Barry

[juergen]

Barry,

thats in fact a lot of questions in one package =) I will try to answer in the order, where answers strike my mind.

1. html is not outdated, its what the browser receiver, parse and display. So whatever you host on the server, what is delivered to the viewer is html. php and asp parts are interpreted on the server and results are sent to the browser in html.

2. When you change the extension of your pages to something else, you basically remove that page from being run through the parser that was responsible from working with its specific content. If you have a page test.asp and change extension to html, the page will be sent straight to the browser and all asp content will not be processed. If you change it to .php, your php environment will analyse the pages and process any php content, leaving eventual asp content behind.

3. If you change an extension from .asp to .html and the page displayed still fine, you probably have no asp content in it. Worst case would be that the page shows fine but lacks some dynamic content that should be there.

4. When you change extensions, search engines need to update their index as what they store are plain links again. Old search index entries will get invalid. That phase should be short though and you can set information for search engines to crawl again and update content more frequent than usual during transition.

5. So yes, as links contain the extension, they need to be updated. Everybody who has linked to your i.e. default.asp or set a bookmark for it, wont find default.php

Just look at every page carefully and check if it contains asp specific code. If yes, it needs to be removed/converted.

And again. Html is not outdated. If you do not have any php or asp code in your pages at all, just save the pages as .htm or .html. Your webserver is then able to just deliver plain pages. If you use .php/.asp, each page will be analyzed and processed by the appropriate engine.

Juergen

[barrym67]

Hi Juergen

Thank you so much for your time and that was most informative. I will then use htm and or html.

Just one last thing which I may need some clarification on is, the my index page is .asp, am I correct in saying that it does not matter to what the actual index page is for the URL of my site will point to the index page no matter what extension it is?

So in Google it shows:

FREE PSP TUBE Downloads, PNG Graphics, PSP TUBES, Clip Art, Frames ...PSP Tubes, Download Free PSP Tubes, Free PNG Graphics, Scrapbooking elements. Anyone can use our clipart in software supporting PNG transparency, ...
www.psptubez.com/ - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

It just references the www.psptubez.com part and not the file extension as such. You see, it has taken me a long time to get my page onto page one of Google and sometimes it is at number 4 on page one. I would hate to change the index.asp to index.html and loose that ranking or as I said will it not make a difference in this instance as it is the index page. I am not too worried about the other pages changing extensions.

I am sorry if I have asked this twice or if you have already answered this, I am totally blond when it comes to things like this, I only knew one way and now I see it was not the right way! :-)

Anyway I do really not have much option if I am going to buy a linux/unix platform to host my site on, I simply cannot have any asp pages.

Thanks once again and your advice on my second part of this saga would be greatly appreciated as well.

[steve.ledger]

Apache Web Server can parse Active Server Pages (ASP) on a linux platform provided the host has the appropriate modules installed.

It might be worth asking if they do.

I also see that in it's current state, you have a mixture of .asp and .php links.
(the contact us link at the foot is linked to 'form.php')
....This is unusual I think.

As Jurgen points out, your web pages only need to have the .php or .asp extension if they ACTUALLY CONTAIN code of those types. If your site only uses plain html with java scripts (such as the Quantcast script), then .htm / .html is all they need be.

[barrym67]

Hi Sledger

Tks for that most valuable info, I will find out from the new hosting company. Gee what a mission it is to get all these things married.

The reason I have a php contact form, well it was free and the only one that I could find and also one that worked. That is not a serious problem though I should imagine. I see some of the hosting companies have contact forms as part of the deal.

This has all started because the guy who helped me automate the site, well did not do all what he was supposed to in the first place and then is not helping me anymore, he has pulled out. So I have to get software to replace him. I see there are some good software packages that can do a great deal with regards to membership websites. I will go for aMember, that seems the best option so far for me.

Regards

Barry

[steve.ledger]

The reason I have a php contact form, well it was free and the only one that I could find and also one that worked.

I only mentioned this because it demonstrates that both pre html processors (asp and php) appear to be running on your current hosts server software.

[barrym67]

Tks Steve, I see your point. Thank you. You guys are always a great help. Much appreciated.

[stlewis]

Barry

Looks like your site was fairly free of ASP code, but if it wasn't then there are quite a lot of differences between ASP and PHP - most bits are equivalent but they still need translating.

Before I got into web databases, I had a look at both ASP/SQL Server and PHP/MySQL and with my Microsoft VBA experience could understand both languages, at least in broad terms.

On your specific homepage question, it is usually a good idea to have index.html and/or index.htm as the home page unless you have to have ASP/PHP on it; in this case do a bounce from index.html to index.php.

[juergen]

just a quick addendum... It depends on your host server settings what your entry page is called when no pagename is added. most webservers maintain a list of pages to search for, when just a URL is incoming.
That means that usually when a web server receives a request for www.webserver.com, it will cycle throught the main directory and look for index.htm, index.html, default.htm, default.html and usually even more pages if they exist. The first in this list to be found will be delivered.

Juergen

[barrym67]

thank you everyone for your assistance. It is GREATLY APPRECIATED!

I really would not have had this problem if my present hosting company was not so full of nonsense. They upgraded to a new platform and it has only been chaos since then. They NEVER answer my emails and if you go to the live chat line you can wait for up to an hour for a response. I can never log into my control panel as they say my password is wrong and even if I re-set it still no luck. It has been awful!!

Also if my technical assistant guy did his job properly I also would have been trouble free.