Okay I have read most of the postings on this subjuct.  My goal is to get a working a wwwthread forum with static urls at www.RonPaul-WI.net.

I have .htaccess file install which looks like this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)(.*).html$ view_forum.php?id=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)(.*).html$ view_topic.php?id=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^p([0-9]+)(.*).html$ view_topic.php?pid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^l([0-9]+)(.*).html$ view_poll.php?pid=$1 [L]
####### extra
RewriteRule ^(.*)spell.html$ $1spell.html [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*).html$ $1.php?$2=$3&$4=$5&$6=$7 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*)-(.*).html$ $1.php?$2=$3&$4=$5 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)-(.*)-(.*).html$ $1.php?$2=$3 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ $1.php [L]
#######
RewriteRule ^(.*).rss$ extern.php?action=$1&type=rss [L]
RewriteRule ^blabla.html$ index.php [L]

When I turn url rewriting to "on" it converts the dynamic pages to static ones but gives me 404 errors for most pages.

Now that the url rewiting is turned "on" the   'o_rewrite_urls' => '0', line keeps changing back to  'o_rewrite_urls' => '1', in cache/cache_config.php file.

I can get the forum to work once I turn url rewriting to "off" but I loss my search engine friendly static urls.

Can anyone help.  PS I my hosting company is 1and1.com if that helps