Loading particular frame from URL string.

[Simvegas]

Hi everyone,
If I have a site www.example.com
and the index page is split into a top and bottom frame; is it possible to specify which page I wish to load in the bottom frame from a url string.

For instance www.example.com/index.htm?bottomframe=xyzpage.htm

... and then hide this string so users only see www.example.com

I want to do this so I can split test differing copies of a particular page without there being any difference in the two pages URLs.
Thankyou.
Simon

[edited by: tedster at 6:10 am (utc) on Mar. 17, 2005]
[edit reason] use example.com for generic domain [/edit]

[tedster]

Hello Simon, and welcome to the forums.

Loading a particular frame is not too hard to do with javascript - you can see the basic idea in Message #21 of this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

However, hiding the query string is a whole other thing. It would have to be done server side, AFAIK, and even then...

I think split run testing is better done completely on the server, and not through a frames approach - not anything HTML or client-side. There are various scripts available for doing this (see your favorite neighborhood search engine)

The tricky part is to make sure that search engine spiders don't think you are trying to trick them, because split run tests can look just like 'cloaking'.

[Simvegas]

I already have a copy of splitruntest for split testing. But that doesnt hide the extensions. However I have had luck naming one version .htm and another .html

Even with this though I would like to have each page not showing any extension on the URL at all, as I find having extenions on a CPA or CPL campaign like www.example.com/index8.htm can affect conversion, and often cause the visitor to independently visit the homepage and then receive a non specific page incongruent with the PPC ad they have previously clicked.

Thanks for the reply.
Simon

[edited by: tedster at 6:44 am (utc) on Mar. 17, 2005]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]