Using ModRewrite

Let’s say you have just re-designed a website and during the process you were forced to change some filenames in the new site from what they were in the existing website.  For example, about.htm is now called about.php in the new site structure.  Normally you would be forced to endure having a dead link in Google until your new filename get’s crawled or updated from your sitemap.xml.  This can sometimes take weeks if not longer.

A quick way around this is to use the ModReWrite Engine to “re-route” filenames to new filenames.  This also comes in handy if you have a lot of external websites or clients that link back to specific pages in your website.  To setup ModRewrite Engine, simply create or edit your .htaccess file to have the following sample code: (of course change this to match your filenames, etc.)

   1:  Options +FollowSymLinks

   2:  RewriteEngine On

   3:  RewriteRule ^index.html http://www.yourwebsite.com/index.php

   4:  RewriteRule ^directory_name/index.html http://www.yourwebsite.com/directory_name/index.php