What is a "landing page"?

A "Landing Page" is the first page you want a visitor to "land" on when visiting your site. It is a common way to refer to an index page.

What is an index page?

In web-file management, the very first page that any given browser navigates to by default is whichever page is named "index.html". This is true of any web browser, regardless of which content management system the site is created in— WordPress, Cascade, Winx, etc.

To understand how a URL address (the web link you are sharing) finds the page you want it to, it helps to consider the directory (or folder) that houses that page.

URL-Lets-Learn.png

In this example, a page titled "Let's Learn Cascade" exists in the directory named "learncascade"

Being a folder in the main directory, (in other words, it is not inside another folder further into the website),  the URL to that index page is simply the name of the folder after the .com part:

nmsu.com/learncascade

 

 

Why the Folder, and not the Page?

Because a URL address without a file extension (i.e, .html, .doc, .pdf) is an address to a directory, not a file.  It is a request for a browser to find a directory and open its first page— its index page.

An address with a [ / ] forward-slash is an instruction to navigate into a folder named whatever follows the forward-slash. (i.e, /learncascade).

Unless you type .html (meaning you are looking for a specific page document) the browser will be looking inside a directory of the name given, and then "land" on the first page of that directory– always assumed to be an index page.

A "slash" address points to a folder. The browser then seeks an index page.

 

Furthermore, since the first page every browser will seek in any folder will always be the index.html page, it is not necessary to add that to the URL address.

For example, the following sample URL can omit stating "index.html" because every landing page in any browser is assumed to have that same name.

nmsu.edu/learncascade /index.html

URL-Lets-Learn-page.png

It is then necessary that your desired "landing page" be named index.html for a browser to succesfully "land" on it, after having navigated into the directory you provided. 

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NOTE: This does not necessarily mean that every directory in your site must have an index page– as some folders will only be used for storing images, files, etc. But keep in mind that only directories with index pages will be considered "crawl-able," and appear on Breadcrumbs and other automatic navigation. So it is best practice to create one inside every folder you intend to have users browse in.