[quote author=effigy link=topic=120531.msg495439#msg495439 date=1167759806] Try changing[tt] (.*).html [/tt]to[tt] (?:(.*)\.html)?[/tt]. The period is a metacharacter, so it must be backslashed to be taken as a literal.[tt] (?: ) [/tt]is used to group without capturing, and the[tt] ? [/tt]following it makes it optional. [/quote] Based on your suggestions I changed it to the below, which works now exactly as needed. In my situation, I needed this to work to allow for article selection and viewing, as well as SEO friendly comment pagination if comments are available and the max view is exceeded. How does this look now? [code]RewriteRule in-(.*)-(?:(.*))-(?:(.*)\.html)? index.php?id=$1&title=$2&cpage=$3[/code] This now allows an optional .html extension(when viewing article without comment pagination) and one required .html(default for comment pagination extension), as well as optional title/cpage values.