Simplifying the URL using ReWrite Rule - regex

Question

I have a blog which has a number fo categories in a categories.php page. And the original URL looks like this:
http://myname.com/articles.php?category=music
Which I have simplified to:
http://myname.com/articles/music
Using:
RewriteRule ^articles/([\w-]+)/?$ articles.php?cat=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
But is there a way of simplifying this further down to:
http://myname.com/music
--
UPDATE:
I've sorted out the original problem but now I'm hitting another problem. My .htaccess is:
Options -MultiViews
DirectoryIndex articles.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/?$ articles.php?cat=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ articles.php?cat=$1&currentpage=$2 [NC,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ article.php?id=$1&title=$2 [NC,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^articles articles.php
RewriteRule ^categories categories.php
RewriteRule ^about about.php
RewriteRule ^feed feed.php
RewriteRule ^privacy privacy.php
When I visit http://myname.com/articles and http://myname.com/article... everything works fine, but when I go to http://myname.com/categories, http://myname.com/feed, etc I'm redirected back to the home page. Any ideas why this is?

Answer 1

You can use this rule in your DOCUMENT_ROOT/.htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# If the request is not for a valid directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# If the request is not for a valid file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/?$ articles.php?cat=$1 [L,QSA]