Solved my problem by creating .htaccess file in root directory with the statement:
DirectoryIndex index.shtml
Then in my wordpress directory (/blog) I added a second .htaccess file:
DirectoryIndex index.php
Now my wordpress blog works and my website default page is changed.
I changed it back to the default of /index.htm and then made index.htm a redirect page to /index.shtml just so I’d have a working website.
But I want to set up /index.shtml as the default so that it doesn’t have that few second display of the redirect page among other reasons.
Thank you for trying to help.
