The server is actually displaying with the same logic check that my download.php file has. From what I can tell anyway, since nothing which is something along the lines of:
Simplified
if(!isset($_GET['variable'])){
echo "URL is invalid";
}
Since it hits that stop, it doesn't display anything further but my download.php is the only script that has that specific error message on a stop.
Not sure I'm understanding mod_speling the way it would apply here. From what I comprehend, that module would allow a user to misspell something like status.html as stats.html and still get the page to display? But it doesn't mention taking a file and converting it to a directory if someone leaves off the extension.
The only way I've seen .php scripts get re-written as directories - download.php would become /download/ - is with mod_rewrite.
Nevertheless, neither of those two modules are active.