deny direct access to a folder and file by htaccess

I would just move the includes folder out of the web-root, but if you want to block direct access to the whole includes folder, you can put a .htaccess file in that folder that contains just:

deny from all

That way you cannot open any file from that folder, but you can include them in php without any problems.

Your regex is wrong. You cannot have $ following another $ in an input since $ denotes end of text.

This rule should work:

RewriteEngine On

# new rule to handle example.com/blah123/sys
RewriteRule ^(w+)/(w+)/?$ /index.php?id=$1&mode=$2 [L,QSA]

# your existing rule to handle example.com/blah123
RewriteRule ^(w+)/?$ /index.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]

I don't know if RewriteMap work with .htaccess files, but anyway here's my solution for virtual host, which should work flawlessly.

Create a RewriteMap file. See here for more information. This is a very simple text file with: first, the wrong URL without the '/', then one space (at least) and then the right url, like this:

one-piece-episode-528​ /watch-anime/o/one-piece/​one-piece-episode-528​.html
dexter-season-6-episode-1 /watch-interesting-stuff/d/dexter/dexter-season-6-episode-1.html
breaking-bad-full-season-3 /watch-interesting-stuff/b/breaking-bad/​breaking-bad-full-season-3.html

and so on.

convert this simple text file into hash map. For example:

httxt2dbm -i mapanime.txt -o mapanime.map

Now declare it in your vhost:

RewriteMap mapanime 
    dbm:/pathtofile/mapanime.map

So all in all your vhost should look like:

<VirtualHost *>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteMap mapanime 
        dbm:/pathtofile/mapanime.map
    # don't touch the URL, but try to search if it exists in mapanime
    RewriteRule /([^/]*)/$ - [QSA,NC,E=VARANIME:${mapanime:$1|notfound}]
    # if VARANIME not empty *and*
    #   VARANIME different from "notfound":
    RewriteCond %{ENV:VARANIME} ^(notfound|)$
    # then redirect it to the right URL:
    # QSA = query string append
    # R = redirect, 301 = definitive redirect
    # L = last = don't go further
    RewriteRule . %{ENV:VARANIME} [QSA,R=301,L]
</VirtualHost>

Hope this helps.

I don't see a simpler solution, but I'm pretty sure this one will work.

If it doesn't work: read my usual "two hints", and add the rewrite log in your question.

Two hints:

Please try to use the RewriteLog directive: it helps you to track down such problems:

# Trace:
# (!) file gets big quickly, remove in prod environments:
RewriteLog "/web/logs/mywebsite.rewrite.log"
RewriteLogLevel 9
RewriteEngine On

My favorite tool to check for regexp:

http://www.quanetic.com/Regex (don't forget to choose ereg(POSIX) instead of preg(PCRE)!)