modifying EE recommended Mod Rewrite to ignore folder with similar name?

i’m trying to tweak the recommended Rewrite for our use.

The main site and subpages work but it needs to be modified because some web page assets are stored in similarly named directories.

The recommended Rewrite provided by Ellislabs is this and I’ve modified it a little to work with our server:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) abc/$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]

# Directs all EE web requests through the site index file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ abc/index.php?/$1 [L]

EE is installed in a folder called /abc/.

For example, the URL http://oursite.example.com/abc works.

Subpages are mostly working and I suspect this applies to any page really but I’m noticing it on subpages. It removes index.php and mostly loads, such as http://oursite.example.com/abc/subdept/page/

However our developer has some assets kept in a server directory named /uploads/abc/ so if a page tries to load images from this directory, it fails to load those assets because it contains the same name, “abc”.

Thus, what is the best way to handle this?

I’m guessing I can either tell it to ignore “uploads/cls” or correct the current Rewrite so that it only looks at the first “abc”. I’d like for the solution to cover most similar issues that would arise so I don’t have to keep modifying it. We have 12 sites and I’ll have to apply the solution to each one.

Everything I’ve tried hasn’t worked.

Also, I thought !-f and !-d would tell it to ignore it if the file or directory existed and that doesn’t seem to be working as I’d expect here because these images in /uploads/abc/ do exists.

Thanks!