Hi!
johnywhy wrote:would it be possible for for s9y to write to that htaccess file FOR me, since s9y includes "name of index file" in the config screen, and wouldn't that make the most sense?
s9y could write that, but usually it honours what the webserver configuration is. Many users have a custom index.html file prepended to the serendipity file. If s9y now always used "index.php" as the directoryindex, this would conflict with existing users having their own startpage.
So the proper way to fix this would be on your webserver setup, not the application itself, because it is actually not really responsible and cannot guess what file you usually want to display...
what DOES that field do, then, if it doesn't now write to htaccess?
It is there for embedding mechanisms, if you use output buffering and redirect serendipty content. This is actually different than a start directoryindex instruction, because this value tells serendipity which file it should access for the BLOG content, not the startup content of the directory.
People could have an index.html that is loaded as an introduction, then they could have a blog.php file that contains their embed instructions (if you want more info on this, look at
http://www.s9y.org/123.html) to mix their own application with s9y, and the s9y index.php file. In this case, .htaccess would still point to index.html and not the given indexfile "blog.php" because that would load up the blog immediately instead of the startpage that a user has configured/given precedence on his webserver.
Editing the .htaccess manually to insert DirectoryIndex because it does not exist properly on the webserver is the best way to go. It is minimal work for you to do, and does not disturb any vital other functions that other users might have used for SErendipity.
Regards,
Garvin