Ok, so I was wrong...

The other day I tried to deploy a new app on the same server with the config I had posted in previous posts. Although YMMV, I found that I could run one OR the other, not both apps. If I had both configs included, accessing either one of them would give me a 404.

So I got onto the #lighttpd channel and asked about it. weigon (aka Jan, the author/maintainer of lighttpd) responded to me and we discussed my problem. The discussion basically ended with "If you get it working, let me know."

Back to square one!