This may sound like a stupid question, but I have to know the answer. I have seen many sites that use URLs like the following: http://www.example.com/?p=1
What file is being accessed? I have always used something like http://www.example.com/somepage.php?p=1. When the "?" is there by itself, what does that mean?
I have recently installed phpList to handle my email campaigns, and the program uses this type of URL for the subscribe page. I cannot figure out what page it is accessing though. To see it in action you can go to https://www.mylittleblackebook.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=3.
Thank you in advance for any light you can shed on this.
It depends of the web server that you use. If you are on Apache, the DirectoryIndex property is what you are looking for.
Here is its default value :
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm default.htm index.php index.php3 index.phtml index.php5 index.shtml mwindex.phtml
By default (IE. no page specifically called, as in your example), Apache will search every file listed above in the specified order, and use the first one found.
Parameters are handled the same way with a file name specified or not. The default file used will be able to read them.