Although you specifically said no, using the .htaccess
file would remove the .php
extension from all PHP files in all subdirectories in a site. I think that is what you are going for.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php
</IfModule>
Putting that into the .htaccess
file will remove all the .php file extensions. Or you could put it directly into the webserver’s configuration files.