How do I prevent Wordpress from stripping the "at" sign (#) from the URL query string? - wordpress

Question

I am trying to pass an email address to a wordpress page like so:
http://www.website.com/?email=fakeemail#yeahwho.com
However, Wordpress turns it into this:
http://www.website.com/?email=fakeemailyeahwho.com
I even try URL encoding it like so:
http://www.website.com/?email=fakeemail%40yeahwho.com
But Wordpress is too smart and still removes the %40.
I understand that # is a reserved character, but I should be able to still use the URL encoded version. Alas, Wordpress does not want it to be so.
How can I force Wordpress to respect the # sign? I'm guessing I'll either have to hack the internals, or do some mod_rewrite magic.

Answer 1

from http://www.webopius.com/content/137/using-custom-url-parameters-in-wordpress
First, add this to your theme's functions.php file (or make a custom plugin to do it):
add_filter('query_vars', 'parameter_queryvars' );
function parameter_queryvars( $qvars )
{
$qvars[] = 'email';
return $qvars;
}
Next, try passing ?email=fakeemail-AT-yeahwho.com in the URL and then converting it back with something like this:
global $wp_query;
if (isset($wp_query->query_vars['email']))
{
$getemail = str_replace( '-AT-', '#', $wp_query->query_vars['email']);
}
// now use $getemail
This would only not work in the very rare occurrence of an email that actually has "-at-" in it. You could replace for an even more obscure string like '-AT6574892654738-' if you are concerned about this.
Whatever your final solution, don't hack the core to get it to work. :)

Answer 2

I was having a similar problem and I was able to isolate the issue to an SEO plugin. I'm sure the plugin added a filter to the functions.php but as the plugin wasn't being used uninstalling the plugin also resolved the issue.

Answer 3

I also had this problem, but it wasn't caused by a plugin. It was a result of the 301 redirect that WordPress does with regard to your Site URL having, or not having, a www. in it.
If my Site URL was defined as http://www.mydomain.com, then this would work as expected: http://www.mydomain.com/?email=user#domain.com
If the user came to the site as: http://mydomain.com/?email=user#domain.com (NOTE: no www), then WordPress would redirect to this: http://www.mydomain.com/?email=userdomain.com (NOTE: the stripped # symbol)
My solution was to hard code the www redirect in the htaccess file, so WordPress would never have the opportunity to mess with my URL. This page gives example htaccess lines to redirect non www to www and vice versa: http://dense13.com/blog/2008/02/27/redirecting-non-www-to-www-with-htaccess/

Answer 4

I was having a similar problem today when trying to pass Mailchimp data through to a Gravity Form in Wordpress. I found a solution. The original question stated that Wordpress was also stripping %40, but it didn't for me in this instance.
1) In Mailchimp create a new Merge tag. I called mine 'Email Param' and * |EMAIL2| *
2) Export your list of subscribers
3) Copy the normal 'email' column content into the new 'Email Param' column.
4) Do a Find and Replace for all # symbols to %40
5) Import your list and tick the box that Auto-updates that list
6) Update your URL to include the new parameter
* |EMAIL2| *
That worked for me.