htaccess advice

[curtiss]

I'm writing a very simple CMS application to make my life a little easier. I am currently developing the CMS to work the following way:

The root URL will be something like:
http://www.example.com/index.php

Any top level links will look like:
http://www.example.com/mypage/index.html (which will actually point to http://www.example.com/index.php?pagename=mypage)

Any links that specify "mypage" as their parent page will look like:
http://www.example.com/mypage/mylowerpage/index.html (which will actually point to http://www.example.com/index.php?pagename=mylowerpage)

As we go on down the outline, we will continue nesting directories depending on how the parent structure is set up.

Basically, I need to set up an htaccess file that will rewrite my URLs. I need the rewrite engine to pick up the last directory in the URL, whether that's the only directory or the 20th directory in the URL (for example, in http://www.example.com/dir1, it would pick up "dir1", but in http://www.example.com/dir1/dir2/dir...dir6/dir7/dir8, it would pick up "dir8" instead).

I basically have figured out how to do that, but I've run into a problem trying to figure out how to deal with the variance that may exist in the way the URLs are typed. For instance, obviously I want http://www.example.com/dir1/dir2 to lead to the same place as http://www.example.com/dir1/dir2/ and http://www.example.com/dir1/dir2/index.html.

Ideally, I would also like http://www.example.com/dir1/dir2.html to lead the same place, too.

Does anyone have any advice on how to set up my rewrite? Please help. Thank you.

[Allen]

Why are you writing your own CMS when Drupal takes 5 minutes to install, an hour to template and you are done?

[Leprakawn]

I have no idea where I read it, but I recently read a lot of drupal sites are either getting a bunch of spam or getting hacked.

[curtiss]

The first problem with Drupal is that it's more of a blog script than a CMS. I will be using this to create a traditional Web site, not a collection of articles. Doing that with Drupal is certainly possible, but it takes a lot more customization.

The second problem with Drupal, or any other pre-made script, is that I want a few very specific features, and I don't really want anything else included with the script.

By the time you factor in all of the pros and cons of using a pre-built script for the CMS, it is actually more efficient to build my own.

[Allen]

Originally Posted by curtiss

The first problem with Drupal is that it's more of a blog script than a CMS. I will be using this to create a traditional Web site, not a collection of articles. Doing that with Drupal is certainly possible, but it takes a lot more customization.

The second problem with Drupal, or any other pre-made script, is that I want a few very specific features, and I don't really want anything else included with the script.

By the time you factor in all of the pros and cons of using a pre-built script for the CMS, it is actually more efficient to build my own.

drupal is as much a cms as any other tool on the market - the blog is one module but you can make pages just the same

but i get ya - if you want x-only features then yea build your own...