Hacking at 0300

All I wanted was to get a better 404 page for the bililite.com site and to use mod_rewrite to standardize my pages. Of course, nothing is ever simple and mod_rewrite is voodoo. So it took a week of experimenting, pulling my hair and staring at a lot of 500 errors, but I think I got things where I wanted them (still don't have a very elegant 404 page, though!). To make sure I didn't have to go through this again, and to help anyone else out there, here are the things I wish I had known: