David the rewrite rule you posted is exactly what I was referring to with the single line of redirection. That would take care of everything with search engines as it does with real people typing the url or following links to the .html pages.
The code Bill typed and I typed above will let basically let .html files act like .php files so you can run php, but keep the .html extension.
Maybe you won't see a dip if you change things. It could depend on a number of things. It's something to be prepared for, but maybe won't happen. What you could do if you're nervous is convert a few pages at a time. Start building the php template and only use it on a handful of pages and see what happens. Start with the pages that don't get as much traffic and go from there. There's no reason you have to do everything all at once.
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