[RESOLVED] Problems running Php script in HTML file

AHoward007

I am trying to get my computer to run an html file with php script in it. The php script doesn't run. However, when I rename my html file to have a .php extension the php script runs just fine.

NogDog

Yep. The web server has to know if it's supposed to send the file to the PHP processor or not. If you want .html files to be so processed, you will need to modify your web server configuration to do so.

AHoward007

My guess is I need to enable one of the programming lines in my php.ini or http.conf files. Does anyone know which lines to enable?

NogDog

In httpd.conf, look for something like:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

Then just add any additional file name suffixes (space-separated) that you want to be processed as PHP.

AHoward007

Yeah the problem was in the httpd.conf file:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

Once I added .htm .html to the line, php script was able to run in my html files.

Thanks!

bradgrafelman

Incidentally, this also means that your server has to invoke the PHP processor for every .html file it serves up now. Out of curiosity, was there any reason why this was the preferred solution rather than just using a .php extenson?

AHoward007

That's a good question. I don't have enough experience with html and php to know but I have a static hmtl file which I added php script to. Should I just rename the html file with a .php extension? Could this cause any potential problems?

NogDog

Functionally there is no problem renaming it to .php. If the site is an existing one that has already achieved good search engine ranking, it could cause some problems with searches unless you set up some HTTP 301 redirects from the old file name to the new one.

Changing the web server to process all HTML files as PHP will avoid the need to rename files at the slight expense of a bit extra processing. Frankly though, unless this is a really heavily trafficked site, you'll probably never notice the difference on any pure HTML pages.