[thelist] URL Renaming, Page Rank, Strategy

[Ilijevski Dalibor]

Hi Rich,

I suggest you to use Apache's mod_rewrite and show new files when
someone someone tries to open the old ones. That will maintain the Page
Rank.


Ilija
http://www.softserbia.com
http://www.madeinserbia.co.yu

>Howdy,
>I'm working with a client that has had many webmasters over the years.  
>It seems that each one had their own unique way of naming files.  So the 
>site has .htm and .html files, most of the urls have capital letters 
>(something I hate), some of the urls use hyphens others use underscores 
>and lots of them have spaces or %20 in them.  
>
>here is an example url
><a 
>href="/product_pages/Product_Demi_Jus%20de%20Poulet%20Lie%20Gold%20.htm">Chicken 
>Demi-Glace</a>
>
>I would like the urls to look something like this
><a href="/product_pages/demi_jus_de_poulet_lie_gold.html">Chicken 
>Demi-Glace</a>
>
>or even
><a href="/demi_jus_de_poulet_lie_gold.html">Chicken Demi-Glace</a>
>
>This is a fairly large site that has been online for 8 years, it has a 
>Google page rank of 5.  I'm afraid if I rename the files I will loose 
>the page rank.  I could use .htaccess redirects to do this but I'm not 
>sure if that's the way to go. 
>
>My question is what is the best way to do this while maintain page rank? 
>
>Thanks
>Rich
>