Is it possible to check if a page exist in a folder by using .htaccess?

I'm currently not using a CMS for my website. I just create pages in .php format and put them onto my server.

Assuming that I put my tutorial articles in the /tutorial folder and news articles in the /news folder. The original urls of those articles would look like:

http://www.mysite.com/tutorial/the-title-of-a-tutorial-article.php
http://www.mysite.com/news/the-title-of-a-news-article.php

Code (markup):

By using url rewriting, I made the urls look a bit more beautiful by removing file extension and adding trailing slash at the end:

http://www.mysite.com/tutorial/the-title-of-a-tutorial-article/
http://www.mysite.com/news/the-title-of-a-news-article/

Code (markup):

Here comes the question. What if I want to make the urls even more beautiful by removing the folder names? Here's how I want them to look like:

http://www.mysite.com/the-title-of-a-tutorial-article/
http://www.mysite.com/the-title-of-a-news-article/

Code (markup):

Is it possible to do that in .htaccess?

Note that I also have some basic pages like About Us page and Contact Us pages in the root folder that share the same url format (http://www.mysite.com/about-us/, http://www.mysite.com/contact-us/, etc). And I also have folders such as /css and /js for storing my css and js files.

If it can be done in .htaccess, I'm guessing the approach is checking if a requested page exists in the /tutorial, /news, or root folder. Once finding it, display it; otherwise redirect to the 404 page. But I have no ideal about how the code should be wrote. Therefore some advices would be much appreciated. And I hope the approach will not slow down the server response time noticeably.

 

To remove a directory from URL you can use the following htaccess rule:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^folder_to_remove/(.*)$ /$1 [L,R=301]

Code (markup):

 

@RoseHosting,

Thanks. Before I added that new rewrite rule, I tested linking to http://www.mysite.com/folder_to_remove/test.php and http://www.mysite.com/folder_to_remove/test/, and the page showed up correctly.

But after I added that new rewrite rule, the above two urls are all redirecting to http://www.mysite.com/test.php with the 404 page showing up.

Here is my .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/)$
RewriteRule (.*)$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ $1.php [L]

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1/$2.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /$1/$2.php [L]

RewriteRule ^folder_to_remove/(.*)$ /$1 [L,R=301]

HTML:

Not sure where I am doing wrong.