What are your DB driven/template strategies?

I, like many here, have created a database driven/template systems using PHP and the database engine of your choice. However, I am still stuck with having to create directories on the server for every page on the website with the same initialization PHP file that kicks off the whole process. I'm getting kind of tired of this, though not in a major way. Still I am wondering if there are other more elegant alternatives. I have tried searching this and other list archives, as well as googled around, but all I get are tutorials on how to develop basic db driven sites. The only alternative I came up with is to use .htaccess to redirect to my single initialization PHP file, but I am not sure if this is a good technique and of course it will only work on Apache. What are your thoughts? TIA, Colin