Lesta G

are you ona shared host or a VPS

when peoploe talk about the root folder . they mean the one the that your domain starts at . ie where the home page is.
via FTP, for me that equates to httpdocs folder for others public_html (and many others )

so yif say your homepage is aindex.php or index.htm, then find the homepage location and that is where the phi.ini should be

google
website monitoring free

http://www.serviceuptime.com/free_monitoring.php
http://www.serviceuptime.com/psc/index.php

FWIW, I recently only fixed my email notifications by adding and alias for wordpress@mydoman.com to one of my mailboxes (as the email catch all wasn’t working on my domain)

I also installed wp-mail-smtp plugin which helps give you better control of how and where the emails are sent.

what theme are you using?