Do you see something like this?
Or like this?
They are two very different things. The first one is simply passing query string vars to the default index file in the "name" directory, which is probably "index.php".
The second of these is a little more interesting. There are several ways to do that sort of thing, assuming the webserver is Apache:
1. One of the default modules (can't remember which) in modern versions of Apache provides an automatic "nearest match" redirect. This means if you have a file named
, and you request
, Apache will automatically redirect that request to the "name.php" file. (This is assuming there is no directory named "/name" at that location)
2. The Apache module called "mod_rewrite" allows for
extensive hacking of your HTTP requests, so that any request can be redirected to any file, including patterns defined by regular expressions, etc...
3. The standard Apache file that handles "Error Document 404" can be a PHP file, which automatically parses the GET request for files which don't exist, and can thus serve out relevant data. (this is sort of an ugly kludge, for those who don't want to deal with mod_rewrite)