The Complete Story Behind the Web’s Most Important File 'index.html'

#html #webdev #frontend #discuss

You've probably created hundreds of them throughout your entire career. But do you actually know WHY it's called index.html?

Here's why devs need to know the history of index.html

When Tim Berners-Lee built the first HTTP server at CERN in 1991, there was no "standard" for default files. Early web servers were not in order, some used home.html, others used default.html, welcome.html, or nothing at all.

Then NCSA HTTPd (1993) made a decision that changed everything, use "index", borrowed from library science, where an index is your entry point to information.

But here's the best part:

30+ years later, we're STILL generating index.html files.

Why?

Because it solved a fundamental problem elegantly:
"What do you serve when someone hits a directory path?"

The lesson for us developers:

Sometimes the simplest conventions become the most powerful standards. Not because they're perfect, but because they solve real problems and everyone agrees to use them.

That's why you're still typing touch index.html in 2025.

Read the complete story here The story behind index.html

Give it a shot, it's worth reading the history of index.html.