index.html:
This again is where a number of newer
webmasters become stumped.
They upload all of their files and directories, and then want to
access them with their browser, but forgetting to create their
welcoming page as index.html, this is what happens:
They access their site as:
http://www.yourdomain.com/
and what they see is their entire file directory structure!
It looks just like exploring the C drive on your computer!
You don't want visitors seeing that, do you?
When you access your site the web server looks for the "index.html"
file as the (default file) to be sent to visitors, and thus this is
why
http://www.mydomain.com
by itself will automatically display the home or welcoming page.
It's because the server automatically looks for index.html whenever
a domain or directory is called without a filename appended to it such
as this, http://www.mydomain.com/file.html
If it can't find index.html, it will simply list your entire web
directory to everyone that access's it, which is a MAJOR security
risk!
ALWAYS, use an "index.html" file in any directory you create,
including your "public_html" web directory.
In general, it's always a good idea to use "index.html" as your
main page in "all sub-directories" of your account.
Forgetting to place an index.html in your public_html folder, or
any subdirectory of your web for that matter will effectively leave
all of its contents viewable to the world.
