I'm working on a CMS and have a page at mysite/world/index.php in the head section:

PHP Code:
$MyName = ($_GET['area']); 
In my .htaccess file, I have a matching mod-rewrite rule that cites the URL and "area," so that I can type mysite/world/Arizona into my browser, matching $MyName to a row with "Arizona" in my database table.

I'd like to know if it's possible to do this without mod-rewrite. I need to create URL's that contain slashes. For example, rather than append Arizona to my URL, I might append Arizona/History, and it's hard to figure out how to do this with mod-rewrite.

Suppose I break my link into two components, the root link and whatever I append, like this...

$Root = 'mysite/world';
$Append = '?';

Then I could change $_GET to something like this:

$_GET = $Root$Append

So if I type in the URL mysite/world/Arizona/History, $_GET would equal mysite/world/Arizona/History, with the appended portion (Arizona/History) matching a value in my database.

If this is a viable solution, can someone help me fill in the blanks? If not, is there another way to do it?

Thanks.