On the subject of permalinks and queries:
Say, you use an inexpensive subdomain of (e.g.) www.nice.net, thus www.very.nice.net, and that the domain owner has simply placed a frame at this particular location, linking to the actual address (ugly and subject-to-change) of your site.
Consequently, the actual site URI and various associated hashes and query strings are not immediately visible to the user. Sometimes this is useful, but it also makes bookmarking/permalinking impossible (the browser will only bookmark the static address in the top frame).
However, as far as the query strings go, there is workaround. Instead of providing users with permalinks to the actual URI (e.g. prtcl://weird.and.ugly/~very/ugly.php?stuff=here; may even be subject to change), I provide them with this: prtcl://www.very.nice.net?stuff=here.
In brief, I then use the following code to re-populate the $_GET array:
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) { // If set, this page is running in a frame
$uri = parse_url($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']); // grab URI of parent frame
$querystring = ($uri['query']) ? $uri['query'] : false; // grab the querystring
if ($querystring) {
$vars = explode('&', $querystring); // cut into individual statements
foreach ($vars as $varstring) { // populate $_GET
$var = explode('=', $varstring);
if (count($var) == 2) $_GET[$var[0]] = $var[1];
}
} // no, nothing to report from the parent frame
} // no, not using a parent frame today...
If the actual host address is ever changed, users entering the frame (with the nicer address) will be using the new (and ugly) URI, but this way the old query strings will be available to the new address also. The users will never again be bothered by you moving to another neighborhood.