Pro Tip: Custom WordPress URL Parameters

Passing parameters in the URL within WordPress Page Template such as "website.com/page/?name=Lasha&version=214" is generally OK, but be aware! If you use a parameter such as "year" in the URL, it will overwrite WordPress' own "year" variable (if you have pretty URLs enabled) and throw a 404! How did I learn this?

I wrote some PHP code within a Page Template that retrieved data from a custom database by passing parameters through the URL, using the $_GET method. One of my parameters was "year=2010", and I kept getting 404s until I changed it to "fiscalyear" where it no longer interfered with the mod_rewrite rules.

I hope this saves you the headache it caused me when writing custom PHP code within WordPress! 🙂