go live – old website plain html

[ Moderator note: moved to Fixing WordPress. ]

Hi!
I’ve installed WordPress on the website http://www.judge-smith.com (in a seperate folder named ‘wp’) and migrated all content of the old website (in plain html or very simple php) to the wp-site. Everything works, and now I’m ready to go live with the new website.

I removed the old homepage, index.php, from the root folder, and put two files in the root instead:

* .htaccess:
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.judge-smith.com/wp/

* index.html, containing the line
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0; url=http://www.judge-smith.com/wp/” />
in the header.

It works, but it takes a few seconds before the wp-site apears, and visitors will see the index.html in these seconds. I’d rather see the wp-site appears straight away.

Is this the safe way to do it?
Won’t I mess up any of the links and image locations etc.?
http://www.webhostinghub.com/help/learn/wordpress/running-wordpress-from-a-subdomain-or-subdirectory

Laura