One of my favorite features of Apache is MultiViews. It lets me make a file like this:

    www.example.com/widgets.html

and this address without the file extension will work:

    www.example.com/widgets

If the file is widgets.php or some other language that Apache considers a script, then even this will work:

    www.example.com/widgets/1234

and $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] will be set to /1234.

This is all turned on with one line in a configuration file:

    Options +MultiViews

instead of having to turn on mod_rewrite, with its complexity.