404 Error in .htaccess rewriting pages to load without .php, .html extension.

Question

I have been using this rewrite rules for few months and had no problem. Recently there have been an issue with the servers and the localhost with these rules.

I get a 404 error when access pages without .php or .html extensions. I tried few answers which was provided online but nothing helped me in this problem. The 404 error redirects to http://example.com/error.html as written in the htaccess.

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
  RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/example\.com\/" [R=301,L]

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L,QSA]

  ErrorDocument 403 http://example.com/error.html
  ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com/error.html

  <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
    # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

   # Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)
     BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
     BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
     BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
     Header append Vary User-Agent
   </IfModule>

   ## EXPIRES CACHING ##
   <IfModule mod_expires.c>
     ExpiresActive On
     ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
     ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
     ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
     ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
     ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
     ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month"
     ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
     ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 month"
     ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"
     ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 days"
    </IfModule>
   ## EXPIRES CACHING ##


  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule example.php/(.*) example.php?p=$1

  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule example.php/(.*) example.php?id=$1

Answer 1

How about adding the following code?

Options +FollowSymlinks +MultiViews -Indexes
IndexIgnore *

And also why would you have redundant code at the end:

  ## No extension
  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule example.php/(.*) example.php?p=$1

  ## Control File and folder conflict
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l