
Originally Posted by
bdsstudentprogram
Is the index page something that was generated when I created my domain, or is it something that I have to go in and create? I don't have any files that I want on my home page, so if it's something that I have to create, how do I do so?
A placeholder index page was probably generated when you created your domain, but that's not the page you want to show up on your site. If you want people to be able to download documents, you need to create an index page with links to those files. The index page is just the first page you see when you go to the site. For example, if you type "http://google.com" into your address bar and hit enter, you'll end up on Google's index page.

Originally Posted by
bdsstudentprogram
Also, I checked my file manager and my site is showing up in the public_html folder. If I want people to be able to download the documents on my site, would loading them as html allow users to do so?
Renaming a file that isn't an HTML document to .html will only cause problems, as web browsers will try to load the documents as HTML formatted files. HTML files have to be written a certain way, and if you, say rename a PDF file to .html, web browsers won't know what to do with it. I suggest you read up on HTML and maybe look at a tutorial or two. http://www.w3schools.com/html/ has nice tutorials, but there are other tutorials out there as well.
A simple page with a list of links might look something like this: (note, this will not look pretty at all)
HTML Code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>The text that should appear in the browser's title bar</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This Is a Web Page With a List of Links</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="/path-to-a-picture.jpg">This is a link to a picture</a></li>
<li><a href="/another-page.html">This is a link to another web page</a></li>
<li><a href="http://google.com">This is a link to Google</a></li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
You might also want to look at a content management system or blogging platform, like Joomla or Wordpress (there are many others too). Generally, you download the software, upload it to your website, and run an install script of some sort. The system will then set everything up and manage the dirty work of your website for you.