Non-root Loop problem

I’ve tried all the various solutions that exist for my problem. This is sort of a legacy hack question. I have my whole site built, and later added wordpress to manage my news. Most of the site is static though, so I didn’t migrate the whole site to WordPress. Anyway I used to just have a file in the wordpress directory that I called front page which contained the code:

<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
?>
<?php if have post..... etc

I just copied the Main Index Template Loop code sans header/footer/sidebar.
I then did a PHP include from my homepage and just the posts appeared. It was nice.

Now when I do that I either get a blank page, or a no posts error. Is there a way to continue this way, or will I have to figure how do it using the new included static homepage feature.

Thanks