If you use Apache (which I assume you do since you tagged this with htaccess) you can change your Apache config/htaccess's DirectoryIndex property to include the order of priority of index files:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php index.php4 index.php5
Here's the "algorithm":
- Does
index.html exist in the current folder? If yes, then load it, if no, continue:
- Does
index.htm exist in the current folder? If yes, then load it, if no, continue:
- Does
index.php exist in the current folder? If yes, then load it, if no, continue:
- Does
index.php4 exist in the current folder? If yes, then load it, if no, continue:
- Does
index.php5 exist in the current folder? If yes, then load it, if no, continue:
- Send a
404 page not found error
Which means you can create an index.html file and then delete it once you want your site to run normally. Keep in mind that anyone can still access index.php if they wish - they just need to specify it.