Make index.html default, but allow index.php to be visited if typed in

Question

I have the following line in my .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php 

Everytime I go to index.php it takes me to index.html. Is it possible to allow for both, but leave index.html the default for users visiting www.domain.com?

Answer 1

By default, the DirectoryIndex is set to:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm default.htm index.php index.php3 index.phtml index.php5 index.shtml mwindex.phtml 

Apache will look for each of the above files, in order, and serve the first one it finds when a visitor requests just a directory. If the webserver finds no files in the current directory that match names in the DirectoryIndex directive, then a directory listing will be displayed to the browser, showing all files in the current directory.

The order should be DirectoryIndex index.html index.php // default is index.html

Reference: Here.

Answer 2

If you're using WordPress, there is now a filter hook to resolve this:

remove_filter('template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical');  

(Put this in your theme's functions.php)

This tells WordPress to not redirect index.php back to the root page, but to sit where it is. That way, index.html can be assigned to be the default page in .htaccess and can work alongside index.php.