Setting the Name of a Home Page in FrontPage 2000 

Microsoft FrontPage® 2000 users may be surprised to see that when FrontPage creates a new web site, the home page file is sometimes named Index.htm, and at other times is named Default.htm. Why does FrontPage name this file for you? Can you name your home page something besides Index or Default?

What is a home page, exactly?

First, let's be clear about what a home page is. Some common terms for a home page are welcome name, start page, and entry page.

To people visiting your web site, the home page is what appears in their browser when they type the URL for your site in the form http://example.microsoft.com. They don't need to type a trailing slash (/) or a file name at the end of the URL.

Your web server administrator thinks of a home page as a default document or index page of a web site, because it's the file that the web server sends to a browser by default. That is, when a browser requests a URL with no particular file specified (as shown above), the web server looks for a default document to deliver.

To find the default document of your web site, the web server uses a list of file names that it recognizes as default documents. In general, web servers running on Microsoft Windows® operating systems use Default.htm (and variations such as Default.html and Default.asp) as the file name for default documents, and web servers running on Unix operating systems use Index.htm (and Index.html) as the file name for default documents.

For example, if site visitors type a simple URL (such as http://example.microsoft.com/) to go to your web site and your site is hosted by a Windows-based server, the server looks for a file called Default.htm in your web and sends it to the browser. If your site is hosted by a Unix-based server, the server looks for a file called Index.htm.

Visitors could type http://example.microsoft.com/default.htm or http://example.microsoft.com/index.htm to get the same result, but they would have no way of knowing which file name to use. Default documents on a web server make it easier for people to get to your home page.

FrontPage adapts to a Web server's configuration

Like those who visit your site, you don't necessarily know details about the web server that hosts your web site. It would be difficult for you to guess whether to name your home page Default.htm, Index.htm, or something else that the web server recognizes as a default document. If you publish your site on a web server that is running the FrontPage Server Extensions, FrontPage does this work for you.

Note   If you publish your site on a web server that is not running the FrontPage Server extensions (using File Transfer Protocol), contact your ISP or server administrator to find out what file name to use for your home page.

When you publish a web site from one web server to another -- or from your hard disk to a Web server -- FrontPage renames the home page, if necessary, to accommodate the server's configuration for default documents. If FrontPage renames the home page, it also automatically modifies any hyperlinks that are affected by the name change.

FrontPage renames the home page on the destination web server, not in the source location. For example, the home page you publish to a Windows-based web server is named Default.htm on the server, but may still be named Index.htm on your hard disk.

When renaming the home page at publish time, FrontPage renames the home page to match the first name in the web server's list of default documents. Therefore, you may have one or more files in your web site with file names that are valid as home pages, but only the name that appears first in the list is used.

For example, the list of default documents on your web server might be:

1. Default.htm
2. Default.html
3. Default.asp
4. Index.htm
5. Index.html
6. Welcome.htm

The home page in your web site might be called Welcome.htm, the sixth name in the list. When you publish your site to this web server, FrontPage renames the home page Default.htm, the first name in the list. Likewise, you might have a page called Default.htm and another page called Index.htm. When you publish the site, FrontPage uses Default.htm as the home page.

Naming your home page something besides Default or Index

An advantage to letting FrontPage generate the file name of your home page is that site visitors can use a simpler URL than they would use if your home page had a non-standard name. For example, if the file name of your home page is MyGreatHomePage.htm, visitors need to type http://example.microsoft.com/mygreathomepage.htm instead of the simpler http://example.microsoft.com to visit your site.

Furthermore, if you use a non-standard file name for your home page and someone attempts to visit your site by typing the simpler URL, they may be able to see a list of files that comprise your web site, rather than entering your site. This happens because your web site has no page with a standard file name, such as Default or Index, so the web server cannot find a default document to send to the browser. Instead, if your web server allows directory browsing it displays a list of all the files in your web site, including files that you may not want visitors to open. If directory browsing is turned off, visitors see an error message rather than the list of files.

If your web server administrator can customize the configuration of the web server for you, you may be able to get a custom name for a home page added to the list of names that the web server recognizes as default documents. For example, in a small intranet, the web server administrator might add HRStart.htm to the list of default documents so that the home page for the Human Resources departmental web site could be called HRStart.htm instead of Default.htm or Index.htm.

More information

Specifying the Location of New Web Sites in FrontPage 2000