ggsmith

tell us, and maybe we can tell you exactly how to do it.
I would be glad to.
G.Smith

sorry, but, you are doing dumb things, and asking for help with some error and not telling us what you did – because you don’t even realize the consequences of what you did.

you say you created an index.html. Clearly you think writing an html page will replace a server-side program that builds a page dynamically depending on (prior) events. (like did they type in a valid password? are they already logged on, and now, want to log out? Did they forget their password?) … html “has no clue”!

“rusty @ coding“?!
You are rusty at the html document markup language; you have not learned enough about how to use css. Experts at website design – xhtml and css – are designers, not programmers. Get a current book strictly on css and learn to do it right.
You are NOT a programmer. php is a server-side programminng language. Get a book on php and MySQL and learn computer programming and about the SQL database language — and leave the php programs alone till you have learned.

you need to state exactly what it is you want to accomplish, not “how”, “what”.

Sorry, pointing to those other web sites does not explain anything.

have you already gone into wp-admin/css/login.css
and put your own header image at the top …
#backtoblog a {
background: url(../../images/header.jpg) no-repeat top center;
font-size: 36px; /* some bigger size !? */
width: 1000px; /* whatever your */
height: 170px; /* image size is */

and removed the wp image …

h1 a {
/* background: url(../whatever-it-was); */

you don’t mention checking your config.php file. If your db name, user, & pw are all still the same, good.
Additionally, is the name of your website still the same? and the folder wp is in? … do you maintain a backup / test copy on another server-website?
Some versions back, it became possible to

override the database by putting the 2 lines below into your config.php file. – Much easier:

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://’.$_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].’/wordpress’ );
define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://’.$_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].’/wordpress’ );

change the folder name “/wordpress” to whatever you renamed it to, if you did.

This way, it is dynamic, and portable, not “hard coded” and “unmoveable”. If you have a backup copy in a different folder, (say one is in wordpress and the other is in backup or testing), using these 2 lines, instead, makes the folder name dynamic also:

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://’.$_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].dirname($_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]) );

define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://’.$_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].dirname($_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]) );

This way, your config.php file can be portable along with all the other files. It can be very valuable to not have to maintain multiple config files.