If they can do it, why can't I?

[college_amy]

I have seen many websites that have url's like this:
http://www.bose.com/q4217
and when the page loads you get a different page and the ID on the query string is, you guessed it, q4217.

I want to know how to do that without having to set up a directory for each possible ID.

I have also seen ones like this:
www.pamperedchef.biz/mary
where it pulls up a person's website that they customized to suit their business but I know that this company can't have possibly set up over 1000 directories for each rep that they have who has a site with them.

So my question is, how can I do this same thing - without setting up a million directories?

I want to have it so that my page defaults to a certain page if something like that is typed in and then use that value after the / as an id associated in my database to a person who I can then track the person who is visiting the website under that id of the original url....

Anyone know how to do something like this?
Amy

 

[shaul_ahuva]

What you're talking about is essentially url re-writing - take the incoming request's url, figure out where to go based on the url/querystring and do a server transfer.

Here's an article on The Code Project.

 

[college_amy]

Awesome... THanks...