Yes the extra long variable name is there for a reason: I thought openFile (the original name) was a built in function. Here's the code:

extralongvariablenamethatisntafunction = "genericstring"
name1 = open("name.txt")
name = name1.read()
name1.close()
#the whole ton of websites in the list folder
number = 1;
evalstring = "n"
def genericloopname():
    eval("extralongvariablethatisntafunction=open(\"WebsiteList/w"   str(number)   ".txt\")")
    eval(evalstring   str(number)   " = extralongvariablethatisntafunction.read()")
    eval("extralongvariablethatisntafunction.close()")
    if (number < 9):
        genericloopname()
genericloopname()
#write to the JS file
openjs = open("loadingscript.js", "w ")
towrite = "document.getElementById('user').innerHTML = '"   name   "';"
openjs.write(towrite)
openjs.close()

In case the indentations don't come out right, they are correct, the syntax error is pointing to the equal sign of "extralongvariablethatisntafunction=open("WebsiteList/w1") Thanks!

[Edit] To be exact, here's the error itself extralongvariablethatisntafunction=open("WebsiteList/w1.txt") ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax