Removing file extensions

[JonnoTheDev]

Just taken on a site that has a rewrite rule in place to remove & redirect .php extensions. i.e /about.php will become /about.

However, there are other rules in place and I have just noticed that if the url parameter doesn't match the rewrite condition a 501 Internal Server Error is thrown as opposed to a 404.

It is definately the rule that removes the .php that is causing the issue as commenting it out solves the issue, however this rule must be left in place.

 

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^archive/([A-Z]{1})$ archive.php?letter=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^page/([0-9]+)$ page.php?id=$1 [L]

# Remove .php extension
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.php\ HTTP
RewriteRule (.*)\.php$ $1 [R=301]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule (.*) $1\.php [L]

ErrorDocument 404 /missing
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.disney.com

 

Ok, so if the URL is http://www.foobar.com/page/1 then it works fine. Same for removing the .php extension http://www.foobar.com/about.php will become http://www.foobar.com/about. However if I try to use an invalid URL (on an existing mod rewrite rule) to test a 404 i.e http://www.foobar.com/archive/123 then I will get a 500 Internal server error.

 

Any ideas? Mod Rewrite not really my strongest area for debugging.