Yes, that is.

Okay, I've got that in there now and I've gone through the whole page setup again. For a while the category URLS were trying to go to /attractions/attractions/historical-places for example, but changing the link in the category template to this fixed that.

<a href="/attractions/<perch:category id="catSlug" type="slug" for="catTitle"/>">

Now when I click on a category, the URL 404's instead of showing nothing, which may or may not be progress. What else am I missing?

My revised list-detail page looks like this:

$match_found = false;
// Create region for attractions
perch_content_create('Attractions', array(
 'template'   => 'attractions/attraction.html',
 'multiple'    => true,
 'edit-mode' => 'listdetail',
));

if (perch_get('cat')) {
      // Show selected category and description
     perch_category(perch_get('cat'),array(
        'template'=>'categories/attraction_single_category.html',
        'set' => 'attractions',

    )); 
  // Show attractions from selected category

     perch_content_custom('Attractions', array(
      'template' => 'attractions/attraction_listing.html',
      'page' => '/attractions/index.php',
      'category' => perch_get('cat'),


     )); 
    $match_found = true;
}

if (perch_get('s')) {
     // Detail mode
  perch_content_custom('Attractions', array(
      'template' => 'attractions/attraction.html',
      'filter' => 'slug',
      'match' => 'eq',
      'value' => perch_get('s'),
      'count' => 1,
 ));
    $match_found = true;
}

if (!$match_found) {
    // Show categories list
  perch_categories([
    'set' => 'attractions',
    'template' => 'attraction_category.html',
      ]);
  // List mode
  perch_content_custom('Attractions', array(
      'template' => 'attractions/attraction_listing.html',

     )); 
   }

LIst of Categories

<a href="/attractions/<perch:category id="catSlug" type="slug" for="catTitle"/>"><perch:category id="catTitle" type="smarttext" label="Title" required="true" /></a>

Listing

<h3><a href="/attractions/?s=<perch:content id="slug" type="slug" />"><perch:content id="attrPlaceName" type="text" /></a></h3>

<perch:categories id="attrCategory" label="Category" set="attractions" divider-before="Categories" required="true">
<a class="attrCatLink" href="<perch:category id="catPath" />"><perch:category id="catTitle" /></a>
</perch:categories>

The list of categories link 404s. This one:

<a href="/attractions/<perch:category id="catSlug" type="slug" for="catTitle"/>"><perch:category id="catTitle" type="smarttext" label="Title" required="true" /></a>

Rewrite looks like:

RewriteRule ^attractions/([a-zA-Z0-9-/]+)$ /attractions.php/?s=$1 [L]

That very URL will 404, yes.

Okay. I'll be back when I get that sorted out in the hope that it magically solves all problems.

I ended up splitting it into multiple pages which resolved my issues.