Ok first the disclaimer, Im not a php programmer and I am only maintaining this php site, so naturally I have no Idea what Im doing.

Heres the problem:

When the site is loaded by domain name alone, it does not load the index.php page. Instead, it loads the index.html, which is only the background.
In order to get the correct page to display I have to enter
http://domain_name.com./index.php .

Hi,

have you tried to delete index.html from the server?

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This is my junk I'm gona eat it

This isn't a PHP question, but an Apache HTTP Server question. Modify your httpd.conf file's DirectoryIndex property so that index.php is listed before index.html. I suspect the opposite is currently true, or index.php is not listed. If you're on a virtual host, you can also modify .htaccess in your server's root directory to contain "DirectoryIndex index.php index.html" to also implement the behavior.

Jon Emerson
http://www.jonemerson.net/