DirectoryIndex - problem (perhaps).

Greetings & Salutations, I was wondering if someone knows how to properly configure apache to recognize other index files, bessides "index.html" - be default, I don't use index.html, but rather "index.php3" or "index.shtml" - however if there isn't an "index.html" in the directory, but there exists a "index.php3," regardless my apache does a directory display and doesn't fetch the "index.php3" file. I've tried editing the "DirectoryIndex" in the httpd.conf file, and tried several restarts of apache, however nothing seems to be registering. What could I be doing wrong?

Sincerely,
Jay.

Assuming your php script is working properly and "mod_dir.so" was compiled into apache. Then simply add this to your httpd.conf.
<IfModule mod_dir.c>
DirectoryIndex index.php3 index.shtml index.php index.html
</IfModule>