How to use PHP in pages with a .html extension (or any other) at DiscoMoose

How to use PHP in pages with a .html extension (or any other)

5 Comments Published by Steven 4 years, 4 months ago in Basics and PHP

To be able to use php code on a page with an extension other than .php, you need a server which supports .htaccess files.

To add an extension to be parsed for php, create or edit a file called .htaccess (with the dot first) containing the following line:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .moo .htm
This tells the server to check for php code and execute it in files with extensions .html, .moo or .htm. So upload that .htaccess file in the same folder as your .html files with PHP code inside them (using PHP tags: <?php ... ?>) then when you view them in the browser, the PHP should be dealt with as you’d expect from a PHP page.

5 Responses to “How to use PHP in pages with a .html extension (or any other)”

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1 Jeremy Votaw Aug 3rd, 2006 at 10:30 pm

Why would you want to do this?
2 Moin Sep 4th, 2006 at 5:52 am

great! & greatest infromation. thanks.
3 V anesa Mar 18th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

I have good page ranking however I wanted to use php on the pages without resorting to making it a page with php extension. It really works…is there a downside though?
4 Eric Jun 20th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

You can do something similar with mod rewriting, though it is more complicated. The whole idea behind making php “appear” like static html is, generally, for search engine optimization reasons. Many search engines do not like dynamically generated content, leading some webmasters to “trick” search engines by making them think that dynamic php pages are really static html.
5 James Aug 26th, 2007 at 8:04 pm

I think a more important reason is so that if you ever switch to a different server-side scripting language, you don’t have to break all existing links.