Ebbie;

Actually, you'd replace the entire text following the "http://".

If it helps, think of it this way... Take the address "http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=30236":

A rough analogy to the real world would be something like this... "www.mudcat.org" is the city you're telling the computer to go to... once in that city, your computer will look for the apartment building "thread.cfm", and within that it'll find 'apartment' (or threadid) 30236.

So when you're directing people to sites with links, the entire thing has to change from the www on... otherwise, you're sending computers to an entirely different 'city', or site.

I think this may be what you were getting at. If not, let me know...

M