Coding & scripting: Expression Engine -- Rmving index.php from URLs

Expression Engine -- Rmving index.php from URLs

I'm hosted on 1and1 and am having the hardest time removing index.php from my URLS -- its a pain to have to hardcode this into all links, and I just cannot remove it!

I've tried editing my .htaccess and every time I do so, i get a 500 error. It's contents are below, and I was wondering if anyone could help me:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 ^(main|styles|search|js|blog|events|news|discuss|polls|mobile|media|officers|calendar|splash|P[0-9]{2,8}) [NC]
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ./index.php?/$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteBase /


Options -MultiViews


Thanks!
-Richard

You can view the site at http://2012.freshmanforrichard.com