Moving To CI and Loss of Page Rank

[eluser]purpleparasol[/eluser]
I have a client site that needs to be updated - made to look a bit more web 2.0 in style, and with interactive functionality.

The home page currently has a moderate Google Page Rank (PR4) which should improve after the planned enhancements and additional marketing efforts.

I want to re-write the site using Code Igniter. But this will move the pages from where they are now to the CI style urls. Also the home page will move. I am on Apache - Can I address all of this using url re-writing so that we don't lose incoming links and page rank? Is that what other people have done?

If this is addressed elsewhere please show me where as I couldn't find it.

[eluser]johnwbaxter[/eluser]
Google for Redirectmatch 301 and Redirect 301

The Redirectmatch 301 allows you to use Regex style matching to for instance redirect any request for www.site.com/home.asp to www.site.com/home.php

Good Luck

[eluser]purpleparasol[/eluser]
Thanks very much audiopleb - I'll look that up and learn to apply it.

[eluser]johnwbaxter[/eluser]
No problem, if you need anymore help, feel free to ask.

One example to be going on with is this:

RedirectMatch 301 (.*)\.cfm$ http://www.mysite.com$1.html

The above will covert any request for any page on the site ending in cfm to the same url but ending in .html

The url has to be exactly the same though just with a different ending.

Page rank did carry over, it took a month or two to do so, but you wont lose any pr because of it.

[eluser]purpleparasol[/eluser]
Now the <a href="http://www.thechaingang.co.uk">site is up and running, I've done the RedirectMatch 301 commands for the .htaccess file. They take all previous pages to my new home page. The old home page was the only one with any reasonable PR anyway. Well, as of today the PR of the new home page is unranked. Hopefully it will be restored some time soon.

[eluser]purpleparasol[/eluser]
I had no page rank whatsoever for a couple of weeks, and today it is back to PR4 on the home page. Thanks for your help.

[eluser]johnwbaxter[/eluser]
No problem, glad it all went well.

Just having a quick look at the home page, you have got the link to the bottom of your own site missing a "t" out of the "http", also i don't know if i would advertise the version of CI that you are using, it might be that a vulnerability is found and then someone would know exactly how to attack your site.

Just a thought