what will happen when you have two or more index pages?? (for example .html, .htm, .php, .asp, ...) when you type www.mysite.com what index page will be used? What about SE's? Will it be a problem when the content is the same (or almost the same)?
i know that if you have index.html and index.php on the same server index.html is loaded when you just enter index, or nothing
i believe that .htm and .html gets the hits when paired with other index pages but what about index.html and index.htm are both there? and what about search engines? will they find it wrong? (I believe it is somewhat underhanded but will they see both?)
The "home page" is set on the server. Example: I have a site using CrystalTech (Windows based --- here come the boos) which has within the admin panel the ability to specify any page as the default home page. You can even "rank" in order which files to use in case you rename or remove one from the site. As far as I know, it really doesn't matter much which extension gets used and there may even be some added value changing the homepage name from index to something more in keeping with your site content! As for users, having them type in the root url address (e.g. either www.mysite.com or mysite.com) would automatically send to your specified default page. I'm sure there are plenty on this forum more knowledgeable than I about .htaccess and redirects to explain that side of the equation.
I have some sites with index.htm and index.html on Apache servers, and I've never been asked to specify which is the home page. All traffic goes to the html pages.
Your server will determine which page gets read first and then the bot will index the pages linked from the the default page. For example; If the server is configured to say that the default page is index.php then that is what the bot will read. If index.html is linked from index.php, then the bot will find index.html, otherwise it will not find it. Also, servers set the defaults up in priorities, so it will basically search for a default page in the order it is told to: index.htm, index.html, index.php, index.asp, etc., depending on the server type and the configurations and any modifications made. You can't get a bot to read, or request more than one default page read by going to the url alone... -
I'm pretty sure it's set in the .htaccess file, as North Carolina SEO. Your server has its default settings, which you can override if you need.
You could set up back-links to different "home pages," though I'm not sure how much advantage there would be to this.