It's been over two months since I lasted posted about setting permalink structure (thanks to all for the help) and I've finally recreated my html based website in Wordpress offline. It functions perfectly. The current html site exists on my server and I now need to upload the WP version. The old/current site will exist behind the new WP version. I'm clear on exporting/importing the new database and have almost all the htaccess/301 redirects in place but in the past 24 hours I've been getting more and more confused by how the current "index.html" will function with the WP "index.php" both in the root. I'm scared to upload anything for fear of one or the other not working. How can I upload the new offline version as seamlessly as possible so there aren't conflicts between both files? Do I need to reset the config in Apache to default to "index.php" first and do a 301 redirect on the "index.html" to "index.php"? After two months of constant work on this, I just need to get it online and get some sleep... at least a full 8 hours. Many thanks in advance.
If you're migrated everything over, why keep the static (html) website online? I'd backup it up, download it to a local drive and remove from the webserver.
I have a couple of thousand pages that bring in quality search traffic, dating back to '05. Removing everything in favor of a clean WP install means completely de-indexing myself from the major engines and killing my site and three years of work. My current site has to exist behind the new WP version with old pages redirecting in search engines. From what I can find, all signs point to major conflicts between index.html and index.php, but I'm trying to mitigate the damage before I do anything.