holding page conflict

hi,

I have a holding page on my site, index.html, just while I’m populating wordpress – frustratingly however I have to ‘switch off’ (rename) index.html every time I work on the site as every time I click on a link it bounces back to the home page (not index.php)

has anyone got any ideas around this? probably something simple

I thought I could use .htaccess, using the code ‘DirectoryIndex index.html, index.php’
but haven’t had any joy