I did.

http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/Acquisition.stx

mentions nothing about index_html... Actually the thing is that if index_html isn't in the current folder, then zope will search it in the parent folder till it finds something (that's Acquisition). Usually all zopes have this file in the root folder by default, so zope will allways find something.

As Dylan said, search "objectIds" in the help of your zope. It returns a list of the files in the current folder, so you could do something like: file='index_html' if not file in context.objectIds(): context.invokeFactory('Member Profile', id=file, title=file) Regards, Josef