Introduction
Using PHP and mySQL

You've probably seen those short and sweet URLs that "jump" or "go" somewhere. In my early days (last year) as a PHP coder, webmaster of a new PHP/mySQL-based site and e-zine editor, I noticed more and more of these jump urls. They got my attention because they seemed like an easy way to:

1. Reduce the length of especially long URLs
2. "Hide" the identity of a link

The former item was especially critical when I wanted to display a newsletter link to information that would be of great interest to my readers, but the length of the URL exceeded the standard 65-character limit of standard text newsletter lines. A URL that breaks into a second line of text is virtually useless to the reader -- it's not clickable "as is", and it requires one or more copy-and-paste operations to get it into the browser's address line.

For example, I have a page that's deeply buried in my site's structure. Because of this, I want to replace its actual URL:

http://www.webthejoint.com/somedirectory/archivedirectory/2000 /december/index.html

with something like this:

http://www.webthejoint.com/jump.php?id=5

Keith Reichley
www.webthejoint.comKeith Reichley is webmaster for WEBtheJOINT, the web resource center for small business. Contact Keith at keith@webthejoint.com.