Site rank(?) vs Page rank?

Hi,
This is my first post on this forum and I will try not to make a fool out of myself but I have noticed something with my sites (pages) PR that I dont really get. I have read the paper on back rub (google) but it still doesnt give a clue.
As I understand Google ranks pages, not sites, different pages on a site can of course have different PR, usually we look at the home (usually index.xxx) page when we refer to a sites PR.
I recently changed all my sites from ASP to PHP technology and at the same time changed the page names, basically, redid all the sites. All pages had to be indexed again and they very well started off whith no index, then PR0 and hopefully the different pages will starting to recieve PR soon.
BUT, the sites PR remained untouched. In some way the site has its own PR then, thats of course good if you have a site and want to redesign it, but is that really page rank?
Since the ranking is calculated on the "votes" for the different pages on the site then all votes for mysite.com/ is not for the index page but for the "site" in itself. If it used to be index.asp and now is changed to index.php (a totally new page) it actuallt inherits the PR of the old index page eaven though the page shows PR 0 when addressed with the full URL and PR X when addressed with / (it still refers to the same page).
I guess this isnt the first observation of this, but I couldnt find another thread with info about it. I am sure google is doing this delibriate and it has a very good and logic reason to do it but I cant help to see it as an inconsistancy.
Lars

Welcome to the forum!

Firstly let me start off with, PageRank is not what it used to be. People are still obsessed about it but they should not be. PR is more of an ego thing for Web sites then rankings are. PR5's can easily outrank a PR6 for a targeted keyword if done right. So what would you rather have? High PageRank values for your pages or higher quality targeted traffic to your site.

Secondly, PageRank does not work on the "site" level. If your index page has a PR5 then the PageRank of your site is not P5, its the pagerank of your index page that is a PR5. Normally, sites obtain most their incoming links from external sources to their index pages. So most people say, I have a PR6! They are talking about their index page. But if you click through the person's site, you will see the PR value drop a point or two. Each page has its own PR. But you can cleverly use one page's PR to help your other page's PR. (Again, read my first point). On how to "channel your pagerank" check out one of our own mod's article named Channeling PageRank.

Welcome to the forums!