.htaccess redirect from domain root to specific location?

[fivestringsurf]

I need to redirect using .htaccess.

 

when someone goes to

http://mysite.com or http://www.mysite.com

I need to reroute them to http://mysite.com/index/

 

I've been trying:

DirectoryIndex /index/
...and
Redirect 301 / http://localhost/mysite/index/

 

.htaccess is foreign to me and besides looking for this specific solution I would like to learn so if anyone has any good references/learning portals for beginners they recommend...that would be appreciated.  The manual at the apache site was pretty useless to me.  It was kinda like sending me to php.net as a way to "learn" -everything you need to know to learn people would say...uh no not for beginners without a masters degree in computer science!

 

Thanks for reading.