Sorry, I did not intend to offend. I will start another topic
Johnathan: Thanks for the reply. This post was apparently initiated by someone from my service provider as it is a paraphrasing of a request I sent to them. I have yet to hear from them, but I have tried your suggestion. Indeed there was an index.html file in the root of the public directory. I deleted it but the problem persists. In response to a suggestion in the WordPress documentation, I also examined the .htaccess file which was present in the same directory but empty. I added this text “DirectoryIndex index.php” (less quotes) to that file but still no joy. I appreciate your tolerance of stupid questions from a rank beginner.
