XHTML vs. PHP

[bensd]

I am in the process of building a fairly simple site, but will still have between 100-150 pages.

I have started to build it, but a few times i have decided to make changes to my header or footer. When working with XHTML this meant that i had to go through each page and manually change the code. If i decided to code the website in PHP i can use the include() statment for my headers and footers.

Apart from my contact page, the include() statement is the only PHP used throughout the whole website.

1. Is it frowned upon that i am mainly writing in XHTML but the website is in PHP?

2. Do the search engine treat PHP pages any differently?

3. When the webite goes live i was going to use a <meta> redirect to index.php - is this the correct thing to do?

Thanks for any help in advance

[tristanperry]

1) Absolutely not There's nothing wrong with having a .html or .php page. Just to clear a few things up, actually. The website would still be in XHTML, nobody could tell differently. PHP, however, would be in the background to generate some of that XHTML (via the include(); statement) - there's nothing wrong with this.

Heck, who knows. In today's dynamic web, maybe the search engines would prefer the use of PHP, Perl (etc). Although one thing's for certain - it's not frowned upon.

2) Nope - unless you are passing a lot of data through a URL. For example "index.php?page=contact&section=example". Although that doesn't seem to be the case, so ignore that observation

3) How do you mean? Why would you need a meta redirect to index.php? Just have index.php as the only index.ext file, and people will automatically be served with the index.php page. What I mean by that is that if you have index.html, delete it and just have index.php - that way, people will go to index.php anyway.

Using a <meta> redirect would be a very bad thing to do - it'd block out the search engine bots (as they'd come to a page, and get redirected; not good).

Thanks,
Tristan

P.S. PM me if you have any further questions - I may not actively check this thread (I have too many bookmarks at the moment )

[Japh]

I agree with what Tristan said, but just wanted to add one little thing.

If you delete your index.html/index.htm/default.htm (whatever) file, and just have your index.php, that should work (as Tristan said) depending on your host. If for some reason it doesn't work, rather than try an alternate method, you should contact your host and get them to change the server's settings so that it does work. An immediate redirection would penalise you on search engines.

[Japh]

I agree with what Tristan said, but just wanted to add one little thing.

If you delete your index.html/index.htm/default.htm (whatever) file, and just have your index.php, that should work (as Tristan said) depending on your host. If for some reason it doesn't work, rather than try an alternate method, you should contact your host and get them to change the server's settings so that it does work. An immediate redirection would penalise you on search engines.

[Japh]

I agree with what Tristan said, but just wanted to add one little thing.

If you delete your index.html/index.htm/default.htm (whatever) file, and just have your index.php, that should work (as Tristan said) depending on your host. If for some reason it doesn't work, rather than try an alternate method, you should contact your host and get them to change the server's settings so that it does work. An immediate redirection would penalise you on search engines.

Help! I've lost control of my computer and it posted 3 times!! (How do I delete??)

[bensd]

Thankyou both for your help

[chickenhawk]

you can rename index.php to index.html if you add the following to .htaccess

<Files *.html>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

So it looks like plain html to everyone (even google), but you have php under the hood.

[Ehsan]

Nice trick Chickenhawk , i will try it out

[sunja]

re: meta redirect, why not just add this in .htaccess:

DirectoryIndex index.php

[grace5]

you can rename index.php to index.html if you add the following to .htaccess

<Files *.html>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

most servers will pick up the index.php if the index.html is not present(cpanel servers do for sure) it really not a big deal.If you host server doesn't ask them to add that to the config file for you.

BTW
Xhtml is the way to go