Wordpress view index.php

Install WP in another directory, as pointed out, and then use a plugin like WordPress › Absolute Privacy « WordPress Plugins to restrict access to those logged in and turn off RSS feeds. Set your WP privacy options, too, to block search bots while the site is under dev.

Perhaps the simplest solution would be to install WordPress into a /blog directory and then do a 301 redirect into the blog directory when you're happy to go live.

Otherwise you're likely to run into issues if you rename the main WordPress index.php file.

[UPDATE] I'd also recommend adding a robots.txt file into the /blog directory to ensure the WordPress data isn't prematurely indexed by Google, etc.

Thanks for the answers but I couldn't move the installation as the client had it all setup that way. That's why I needed a way to keep the index.html up while being able to view the index.php for development and not redirecting me to the root when viewing.

So here is the solution that worked for me..

1. I installed the plugin "Maintenance Mode" http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maintenance-mode/

2. I took the complete HTML from the index.html page and place it in the Maintenance Mode plugin template file.

3. Activated the plugin and it worked like a charm

This way I could keep the old site up and work on the wordpress site. When you are logged in you can see the full wordpress site. When you are not logged in you see the "Maintenance mode" template.. Which for me was the Old index.html site.

Thanks all!

Setup a subdomain like preview.example.com, develop there until it's the site is ready to launch. You can even add a .htacess to add password protection.