Question

so my index.php can be this:

<?php
      $restOfURL = ''; //idk how to get this
      print $restOfURL; //this should print 'FOO', 'VAR3', or any string after the domain.
 ?>

Answer 1

Reading $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], as everybody has pointed out, can tell you what the URL looks like, but it doesn’t really work the way you want it unless you have a way to point requests for me.com/VALUE1 and me.com/VALUE2 to the script that will do the processing. (Otherwise your server will return a 404 error unless you have a script for each value you want, in which case the script already knows the value…)

Assuming you’re using apache, you want to use mod_rewrite. You’ll have to install and enable the module and then add some directives to your .htaccess, httpd.conf or virtual host config. This allows you make a request for me.com/XXX map internally to me.com/index.php?var=XXX, so you can read the value from $_GET['var'].