Want to work on index.php behind index.html holding page but being redirected

Hi all,

I am currently working on a new client site in WordPress. When working in Joomla I normally place a simple little holding page (index.html) and can work happily away on index.php and the template etc behind the scenes. This way, anyone landing on the site obviously sees the holding page only.

Now, this is the first time I have tried this with WP and thought that the same method should work. It doesn’t.

I have the index.html holding page online alongside WP installation (with index.php) and when I type in the sites domain along with index.php I am redirected to the domain name only. Now from my own experience this sort of redirection would require a .htaccess file (which I am familiar with) but there is none. I have also logged into cPanel for the domain in-question and looked for any domain controls that may be redirecting – there does not seem to be anything that would be causing this.

The index.html file for the holding page is basic to say the least. It is standard xHTML 1.0 strict (and completely verifies) linked to a small CSS file and a single image.

I appreciate that it may be something silly I am missing but would be grateful if anyone could give me a clue as to why I can’t view index.php and why I am being redirected to the domain name only (and index.html)

Oh yes, one other thing. When I change templates within WordPress admin, I no longer see the appropriate theme in preview, I see my holding page (index.html) When I remove index.html everything works as normal.

I am working with a standard, fresh install of WordPress 3.0 on an Apache compatible (LiteSpeed) server.

Best
Molly