Dynamic Webpages

Anon

Questions... questions... about dynamic web pages.

I know I can use the query string (i.e. www.domain.com?action=2) to create dynamic
web pages. I use links like this... <a href=main.php?action=3>Goto page 3</a> and then
in my main.php I test action and include the appropriate files. This works fine except that my query string is in the clear (in the URL) and visible. Is there a way to accomplish the same thing but hide the action=3 variable.

I'm learning about sessions now but I don't see an easy solution.

How can I control a users navigation via hyperlinks and session variables without making the website one big form? Any ideas would be appreciated...

Anon

Hi
I don't think there's any proctical way to do without passing your vars in the URL as you probably need search engines to list that page.
One clever thing you can do is pass a URL string like you describeb like this;
http://www.main.php?action=3
bcomes
http://www.main.php/3/

Looks a little neater and it's search engine friendly. There's quite a good tutorial on it at http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/485

Good luck

Nick

khaine

You could use a case statement with redirects.

main.php could read.

switch($action)
{
case 1 : header("location: page1.html");
break;
case 2 : header("location: page2.html");
break;
case 3 : header("location: page3.html");
break;
case 4 : header("location: page4.html");
break;
default : header("location: error.html");
break;
}
exit;

then when you click a lick like <A href="main.php?action=1">Page 1</A> you will be taken to page 1. of course you could just put the link to go to page 1 anyway.

Mark.

Anon

Hmm... i think you all are looking a bit too hard into this. frames... remember HTML from back in the day? 😛 (pls dont ravage me im just funnin)

if you set frames than the ONLY address they will see is 'www.yoursite.com' they can click on links all day and never see them in the address bar. unless you do some java they will still see them in the bottom left (with IE) when the move their cursor over them. but just find a page that has text scrolling down there, view the source and copy the javascript to do that. change it to what you want it to say and NO ONE will see the URL to the page they are on, or going too.

if you need more info, ICQ me: 112219206

oh and check out my masterpeice 😉~
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~modhaven

Anon

Thank you all for your input/expertise. I'll pass on the frames, check out the article and likely will use the header redirects... 😉

Anon

Thanks Nick Wilson. I read this article; Method 1, as described, will be an excellent solution.

Anon

You're welcome, try the third solution though it's really very easy if you're working on a Linux machine at home or directly on your remote host.

Nick

Anon

Interesting.... Personally I'm a bit of a frames hater though. Only problem with that is that you would still have search engine unfiendly URL's. A nice solution would be a mixture of frames and the suggestion I made perhaps?

Nick