What does this mean?

[tomj]

Just took over a new website to redesign and optimize. The home page was named "default.htm". Is this normal as I thought all homepages started with "index.htm"? The website is not in the best shape http://www.penguinvideo.htm ...

I know I can help them but would like to know before I get started if something was done by thier former webmaster to penalize them. Why was this naming convention used for the homepage. Can anyone help me?

tomj

[ihelpyou]

No penalities that I can see at all.

No, that page file is fine. The root can be just about anything as it depends on the server.

index.htm
index.html
default.htm
default.html

are all just dandy. :)

[Blue]

You could, if you wish, rename the home page file to index.htm (don't forget to change links to it on other pages).

And Doug's correct. The servers admins will have (or should have) set up what the server will look for as the default file for the "home page".

Usually these are:

index.htm
index.html
default.htm
default.html
home.htm
home.html

Also, they may be set up in a heirarchy, so that it looks for them in the order specified.

The host where the site is hosted should have this documented.

[Dom99]

Depends what server its on.

On an nt machine the defaults are default.htm and .html but most administrators will add index.htm .html and .asp

Ask your hosts!