first say i dont have root privileges on the box in question; just a home directory as a regular user. from what i understand, .htaccess redirects can be for old files in a new location, or just forwarding URL to another URL, which is sorta what i'm doing here. here's what the pertinent line looks like in .htaccess:

Redirect permanent /wishlist /index.php/wish

i shouldve said this is also part of a Wordpress blogging installation (combed support forums there too) and server admin said he doesnt yet have mod_rewrite installed yet, so have to use /index.php. Wordpress' rules.

So, if i enter http://[website.com]/index.php/wish, my wishlist page loads. but if i enter http://[website.com]/wishlist, i get 404 Not Found error. further research revealed that Apache considers things like "/wishlist" to be an actual file and then looks for any file in my dir named wishlist. there is none, so it 404's.

so then i try to trick Apache. i create a wishlist.htm file and drop it in there. but instead of Apache now finding the file and redirecting the request to /index.php/wish as per the .htaccess line above, it just displays wishlist.htm ("hello there").

tried w/o "permament" - nothing. so whats missing? why does Apache consider it a file? can i turn that behavior off? fyi, i know .htaccess is in the right spot...