[eluser]imwithsam[/eluser]
Thanks for all the suggestions, guys! InsiteFX took a look at my code and discovered a minor typo in the closing php statement of my index.php view that was causing the problem. (Thanks, InsiteFX!) Seems the whole directory structure and path thing was a bit of a red herring.
So this whole mess has brought me to another question. What's a good IDE for PHP that will help me avoid these kinds of issues in the future. It sounds like PhpStorm is the most liked overall, but what is the best free solution?