Thanks for the reply. Yes, I must read (and hopefully understand) how Zend_Controller works.

My 404 handling goes like this: by using the useDefaultControllerAlways, a bad url goes to index/index. Currently I hold a list of the existing controllers in the session (via scandir). If the incoming controller is not in the list, then I forward to a notFound() action.

I fixed the ViewRenderer problem by putting exit() after render(). I also had to create: class Default_IndexController extends IndexController with the above error handling in order for it to work.

And yes, modular is great, but it will require quite a few changes in my app