**** Duplicate of another post with exception answers ****
Okay so that is a bit of a vague title; let me elaborate.
I seem to run into a lot of sites that use a URL scheme like such:
http://www.somesite.com/articles/shortened-name-of-some-article/
Now - I know that it is easy enough to create an actual page at that path via some page editor in an administration panel; but I feel like some sites are catching this URL, interpreting it, and displaying dynamic content that's actually coming from a script executing in a top level directory.
I'm curious A. if anyone is following what I'm talking about, and B. what way(s) this is achievable in.
I've considered that one option is a custom 404 page that interprets the referrer and then provides the appropriate data - but this would almost certainly mean a change in the URL at some point, which I don't tend to see.
This is a bit of an obscure 'question' that doesn't necessarily warrant any code contributions - so I may be off base asking here; but I suppose that's a decision for the mods...
Hope my question is clear enough, and thanks if anyone has any clarification.
-- In browsing through tags for this post, I stumbled across url-rewriting - which I know is like... A whole thing... but I'm not sure that it's the right one in this case. I'm going to go peek around the internet for some URL-Rewriting summaries and such and if I answer my own question ... well... Sorry.
