Passing Variables

[webdes03]

I recently moved to a new server, which must be setup a little different from my old...

All of my websites were working correctly on the old server, but now variables are not being parsed through the URL correctly.

Our main global file has this at the beginning:

if(!isset($a)){$a='home';}

This checks to see if a user has clicked on a link to a specific section, which will set $a to the name of the section... if they haven't selected a section, it goes to "home".

When a user clicks a link, it is in fact parsing the variable to the URL correctly, making the url something like, "index.php?a=information", however the script is still using "home".

If I change the $a in the if statement to $GET[a], it works... my problem is that I don't want to go through and chage every variable referance in all of the websites to $GET[]... is there an easy way to convert my parsed variables back to regular variables?

[webdes03]

Edit:

PHP Version is 4.3.10

Is there perhaps a setting on the server preventing this? I have root access, so I can change things, I'm just not really familiar with it all.

[laserlight]

is there an easy way to convert my parsed variables back to regular variables?

Yes, by using [man]extract/man, but it is better to convert them manually and so not face possible variable poisoning.