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Apache does not fix your long URLs to be short. What it does is allow you to use short ones. In other words, you're thinking about URL rewriting backwards: short URL goes into the browser, long URL is what runs on the server. So go to /home and see what happens. Spoiler: it won't work. 1. Try adding an [R] flag to both of those RewriteRules so you can see what is happening. 2. RewriteConds only affect the single next RewriteRule. If you want them to apply to two RewriteRules then you need to use two copies of them.

Perhaps it isn't clear, but with version control, and at this point, the world has standardized on git (for relatively good reasons in my opinion) there is no danger in changing "tested code." This assumes that you have a development/test deployment and a production deployment. If you only have "production" -- well, it goes without saying that the second you have any actual users, you are in big trouble. So, I will make the assumption you have a dev/test system, and again, there is no question that you can change anything you want with git, and test things, and you can do these tests with impunity, and without endangering anything in production. Learn git. Bitbucket and Github are origin repositories where you can keep a master copy of your code in the cloud. They are both used by lots of companies, and both offer private repos for no cost. There are limits to the numbers of people and repos you can have, but in your case either one will be fine. I have accounts and use both frequently, but my recommendation to you would be to use Github. Make an account to begin with, and there are a gazillion tutorials, including interactive ones that will teach you the basics.

Not understanding -- sure that is an issue for many people. I will grant you that there is a learning curve, and for many people the big picture is difficult. With that said, most of these projects had great documentation, and tutorials and demo projects to help people learn them. Writing everything from scratch was a mistake, because your site should have implemented MVC to give it a sane and maintainable structure, and you also clearly wrote lots of code that doesn't have a set of robust unit tests, so your site is inherently more buggy and less stable than it would have been if you had used a framework. You also reinvented the wheel, big time, rather than concentrating on the important things, as in your business logic ,and the functionality of your site. To rationalize this decision as a "challenge" when that challenge did not even include learning the basics of PHP OOP -- is It is what it is, but the path to becoming a better developer is being able to admit you made a mistake. Most project teams include a post mortem for this exact reason -- to reflect on the process, evaluate what worked and what didn't and hopefully improve.