I come from a Java background and with any servlets-based technology, it\'s trivial to map a range of URLs (eg /reports/, /secure/.do) to a specified servlet. Now
As others have mentioned you can use mod_rewrite to do this but also you could use a front controller design pattern which is what many of the web frameworks use. Take a look at Horde routes or Zend_Controller_Router_Rewrite which can be used for MVC,