My problem is if I go to my new installation root director, http://www.arguemax.com/_phpBB-3.0.12/ nothing happens and I get a “Forbidden” message, but if I put the index path in the URL of the browser, it works. That is, http://www.arguemax.com/_phpBB-3.0.12/index.php makes the phpbb load. Why is this and do I really need to be concerned about this? Should I just use http://www.arguemax.com/_phpBB-3.0.12/index.php in all my links on the landing page? I had a look at the .htaccess of this folder and I did not see any mention of an expected index file. Should I put something there?
It sounds like your server’s configuration for DirectoryIndex does not have index.php specified. So it does not load it. I assume you are using Apache. The DirectoryIndex directive tells the server which file to serve if no file is specified such as when typing your domain name or a folder.
#
# DirectoryIndex: sets the file that Apache will serve if a directory
# is requested.
#
<IfModule dir_module>
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</IfModule>
but if you’re on a shared host. htaccess is probably th best you can do.
… BUT Don’t use the <IfModule …> wrapper in your .htaccess file! Find out whether it works (ONCE) so Apache doesn’t have to run the same test MULTIPLE TIMES for EVERY request!
Note: It does belong in the server’s conf file as Mitt has it because it’s only run on start.