.htaccess File Good Or Bad?

[myvv]

Currently I'm building my X-Cart based ecommerce site and I've become concerned with their use of "home.php" as the default home page. I've been advised I'll need to modify the .htaccess file to change the default/index page to "home.php".

Will this process affect my rankings and if so how and why? Also what do you suggest I do to avoid this issue? Perhaps a static html index.htm page directing you to the X-Cart pages?

[littleman]

If done right you should be fine. If you already had index.html in the search engines then you should 301 that over to home.php.