How do I change the default index page in Apache?

Question

I would like to change the default web page that shows up when I browse my site. I currently have a reporting program running, and it outputs a file called index.html. I cannot change what it calls the file. Therefore, my landing page must be called something else. Right now, when I browse my site it takes me to the reporting page.

From what I see, whatever you call index.html it will pull that up as your default. I want to change that to landing.html. How do I do this?

I am a folder (Folding @ Home). The reporting program is HFM.net. HFM can output an html file with my current folding statistics. It names the html file index. I do not want that to be my default home page. I would like a menu-like landing where I can choose if I want to see my stats, or something else. The website is at /home/tyler/Documents/hfm/website (landing.html and hfm's index.html are here). Apache2 is in its default directory.

I'm also running Ubuntu 13.04.

Answer 1

I recommend using .htaccess. You only need to add:

DirectoryIndex home.php

or whatever page name you want to have for it.

EDIT: basic htaccess tutorial.

1) Create .htaccess file in the directory where you want to change the index file.

• no extension
• . in front, to ensure it is a "hidden" file

Enter the line above in there. There will likely be many, many other things you will add to this (AddTypes for webfonts / media files, caching for headers, gzip declaration for compression, etc.), but that one line declares your new "home" page.

2) Set server to allow reading of .htaccess files (may only be needed on your localhost, if your hosting servce defaults to allow it as most do)

Assuming you have access, go to your server's enabled site location. I run a Debian server for development, and the default site setup is at /etc/apache2/sites-available/default for Debian / Ubuntu. Not sure what server you run, but just search for "sites-available" and go into the "default" document. In there you will see an entry for Directory. Modify it to look like this:

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

Then restart your apache server. Again, not sure about your server, but the command on Debian / Ubuntu is:

sudo service apache2 restart

Technically you only need to reload, but I restart just because I feel safer with a full refresh like that.

Once that is done, your site should be reading from your .htaccess file, and you should have a new default home page! A side note, if you have a sub-directory that runs a site (like an admin section or something) and you want to have a different "home page" for that directory, you can just plop another .htaccess file in that sub-site's root and it will overwrite the declaration in the parent.