Guys please I need help on a PHP project I'm working on. Please can anyone explain to me how nairaland indexes it's pages and stores topics under different number indexes. I would be greatly grateful.

It's not a PHP issue. it's a mysql issue.
Read up about database normalization

Is money involved?

if you mean the 'nairaland.com/{a number}/{a permalink}' url pattern.

you can do that by generating a unique id for each created entry(a thread in this case) and storing it in the database.

when a link such as that above is opened, the number in the "a number" portion is checked against the database and the entry whose id matches that number is retrieved.

pm me if thats not what you mean or if you dont still understand.

dave1614:
Guys please I need help on a PHP project I'm working on. Please can anyone explain to me how nairaland indexes it's pages and stores topics under different number indexes. I would be greatly grateful.

For each topic created, a unique slug is generated from the title and saved in topics table with a unique ID (autoincrement).
When user enters url of a topic, server strips the slug and searches the topic table for a match and returns the row (creator, create time, body, title etc). The rest is php pagination.

That's the summary. Just php, mysql and htaccess at work.
Reach me on adeademi2@gmail.com if you need help

It simple logic check my site forum www.naijadev.ml was constructed by me fully if u need help message me