what's index.html?

Answer 1

it's the first page a website goes to in any directory

www.thisiste.com is actually:
www.thisiste.com/index.html
or
www.thisiste.com/pictures is
www.thisiste.com/pictures/index.html

if that file is not there it displays the directory contents or gives an error: it can also be called default.php, home.asp or many other configurations depending on the server

Answer 2

When you have a domain name registered, it has domain name server ("dns") pointers that tell where the host server is located (that is, where the files for the website are stored. The dns pointers may be set up to tell with which file one should start displaying when she/he types in the domain name. That is, if I type, "www.domain.com", what file is displayed first? The domain name pointer may just say that "www.domain.com" is stored at yahoo, in which case you'll go looking for "index.html". (The owner of "www.domain.com" *could* - as I have for a few of my clients - set up www.domain.com to point to a different file, such as domainother.html, in which case you'd go looking for *that* file first.)

Also, when "search engines" like Google and Yahoo! go to "crawl" your website so's they can find it when somebody goes to search for information on websites like yours, the first thing they might try to find is a "directory" (an "index") to the files on your website. "index.html" is supposed to give *them* a starting point for looking around on your website, following links to your other pages, etc.

Answer 3

Hope this is a quick enough response.
index.html is usually the filename of the webpage which will be used as homepage for example when someone types in your website "www.mywebsite.com", you will be directed to www.mywebsite.com/index.html.
The hompage can also end with index.htm.

Answer 4

That is the file name of a web site's home page. Not all web sites call their home page this though.