Home page is ,html and inner pages are .htm

[MaxZesty]

Hello
My home page on my website is index.html and my inner pages are all .htm does this matter?

If it does matter should I now change the homepage to .htm instead? as this would be easier than changing every inner which others link too. At least onthe home page they link to -----.com rather than the extension ----.com/index.html

Can someone please advise. My dad knows this stuff and is a respected developer but he wont tell me, he said I got to come and sign up for a forum and start researching on my own, so hello all my first forum. I am not a professional but learning.

[choster]

My home page on my website is index.html and my inner pages are all .htm does this matter?

No.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld :).

[MaxZesty]

Thanks for the welcome. That is good news. I just told my dad and he laughed and said keep reading and to ask why? It is at least keeping me awake longer. LOL.
SO it does not matter then if my page start with that extension. Is it best practisse? should i change it as it's brand new site?

Thank you

[tedster]

onthe home page they link to -----.com rather than the extension ----.com/index.html

This is definitely the best practice. Keep all your 'Home Page' links pointing just to the bare naked domain name.

The issue here is that you don't want search engines to split up your link-pop (page rank, anchor text influence, etc) between two different URLs. And index.html is not necessarily the same resource as the domain itself (although it is in your case) so the search engines will, rightly, see these two URLs as two different things.

Now your other question - for consistency's sake I think you should keep all your extensions the same - it saves confusion down the road. But there's no technical NEED to make the change.