Two Index Files (index.php, index.htm)

Two Index Files in one site

[mkctaka]

I am using phpbb on my site, As you all know that the main file is index.php

But now I have made html page (becuase of SEO issue) named as index.htm

I have also edited .htaccess file so that first file will be displayed as index.htm and NOT index.php

Just to confirm that will this effect in seach engines, I want to have my site listed in Google.

Does Google or any other search engine understands this or will the penalise my site for having two index files on same place (root)

[Longhaired Genius]

This is not a good road to start down. You should try to keep everything as simple as you can, consistent with what you want to achieve. index.php is perfectly OK. It's good practice not to reference your index page directly at all, link to /, not to /index.php or /index.htm.

Welcome to Webmaster World.

[mkctaka]

Actually I mean to say different thing.

As My PHPBB main file is index.php(I Have installed PHPBB on root of my site)

So now if I want to display first page as index.htm or something other and not PHPBB Forum.

What I did for this is :
I edited .htaccess

DirectoryIndex index.htm index.php

Now On Browsers first page that is opening is index.htm , which I wanted.

So my Question is : Is this OK with search engines?

OR If there are some issues, what are those.

[jd01]

I think I understand what you are saying, and have to agree with longhaired genius... Keep It Simple.

Although having two index pages may not hurt you outright, because you are correct - they are not the same page... The simpler the better, and why take any risk with the difficulty of being re-indexed, compared to the ease of being removed from the index for a mistake?

Could get way off-topic, so I'll leave it there.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

Justin

[philaweb]

~mkctaka

There are no problems with Google or other SE's on this. They'll just index whatever URI you provide.

What you really should ask yourself is how you'd like to structure your website. You may find some good advice by the W3C at this page: [w3.org...] ~ this page being on topic for your question: [w3.org...]

If you decide to structure your website with directory only URI's, there's no point of having multiple index files within a directory, since the server only parses the first one specified in the DirectoryIndex code snippet of the .htaccess file.

The benefit of directory only URI's is the flexibility of changing the underlying technology without SE's having to reindex all of your URI's.