htaccess nightmares, can you help this newbie?!

[DidtheButler]

Hello everyone, I have a common question, but have searched the web for days now and can't find anything that answers this specific one.

HTACCESS is hell bent on trying to kill me. No matter what tutorial I read and how much I follow it to the letter (I mean, I am smart, I drank through at least a year and a half of college if I can remember that far back)...the darn thing excludes everyone and bounces all back to the reroute page.

So here's the real question: I have several AVS's all feeding into the SAME content pages, in the same folders (obviously). Is it possible to protect the pages while not interrupting the good visitor's stay? Do people with multiple AVS affiliations double upload everything so each AVS has their own content folder?

Any advice ANYONE can offer would be greatly appreciated...I will probably be here at my computer until I figure it out, or until I turn into a pile of bones, filled with spider webs....in which case I may not be able to respond to your messages as quickly.

I can be found on Yahoo Messenger at DidTheButler and on ICQ at 198296356.

On a slightly different topic...I had an AVS load my sites yesterday morning and almost instantly the pages started moving with what I would consider unreasonably strong traffic for a new site....can anyone share the things that should send up warning flags that you're being linked?

Thanks again, hope to hear from someone soon...I'm going to smoke a cigarette or 20 now.

~Kyle