It's generally considered bad form to have a meta refresh on your index page - it tends to confuse people who haven't been to the site before. If they have a very slow or very fast connection, they'll either see part of your index page and then it'll suddenly change to another URL, or they'll see the entire page, start to read it/navigate, and then have the page refresh without them knowing why. Your potential viewer might think they did something wrong ("What'd I press?!!") or that it's annoying ("What the hell's going on?"). If you do use a meta refresh, it's a good idea to also leave a link to the refresh target just in case the meta refresh doesn't work.
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content=".25;URL=myblogpage.php">
<body>
<p>you should be redirected <a href="newplace.com">here</a> in a few seconds.</p>
</body>
</html>
The most elegant way would be to edit the configuration file for your particular blog package/content management system before you install it (
movabletype, for example, has a file called "mt.cfg" where you can change all the installation settings, including where it'll install to). Generally, it'll be an editable value like "Path to blog=/home/username/public_html/". Howe'er, if you're using a blog package that's a "click and install" dealie, that's probably more effort than it's worth.
What I'd do is to change your index file from index.html (or index.htm or whatever it is currently) to "index.php". Then, I'd use a PHP include in your index.php file, pointing to your blog.
PHP includes work like this:
1) I've got a file located at soandso.com/file1.php, and I want it to show the stuff I've got on soandso.com/file2.php
file1.php:
<html>
<body>
<p>hello</p>
</body>
</html>
file2.php:
<p>I've got awesome stuff here!</p>
so if I make file1.php look like this:
file1.php:
<html>
<body>
<!-- include file2.php -->
<?PHP include "file2.php" ?>
<!-- include file2.php -->
</body>
</html>
what you'll actually
see when you visit
http://www.soandso.com/file1.php is:
file1.php:
<html>
<body>
<!-- include file2.php -->
<p>I've got awesome stuff here!</p>
<!-- include file2.php -->
</body>
</html>
(except, obviously, it'll look like a webpage and not html code)
So, the easiest way to do it would be to have a file named "index.php" in your root directory (i.e., one you can find by clicking on
http://perfectcr.com/index.php ). Make sure you don't have any other index files (like index.htm, index.html, or index.shtml), and have this (and only this) as your HTML markup for the page:
index.php:
<?PHP include "serendipity/index.php" ?>
And that's it.
There are a few problems with this approach, too - namely, if you have a lot of visitors or are trying to PHP include a very large file (>500kB, say), it'll use up all the CPU time on the server and you'll probably get an angry email from your webhost. For most folks, though, it's a good enough workaround and it's much more interwebuser-friendly than a .25 second meta refresh.
[edit]
made it a lot simpler.
also, here's some more info about PHP include:
http://www.tizag.com/phpT/include.php
