I’ve banned query strings — Chris Morgan

🗓️ 2026-05-08 • Tagged /web, /opinions, /meta=only I don’t like people adding tracking stuff to URLs. Still less do I like people adding tracking stuff to my URLs. https://chrismorgan.info/no-query-strings?ref=example.com? Did I ask? If I wanted to know I’d look at the Referer header; and if it isn’t there, it’s probably for a good reason. You abuse your users by adding that to the link. https://chrismorgan.info/no-query-strings?utm_source=example&utm_&c.? Hey! That one’s even worse, UTM parameters are for me to use, not you. Leave my URLs alone. So I’ve decided to try a blanket ban for this site: no unauthorised query strings. At present I don’t use any query strings. If I ever start using any query strings, I’ll allow only known parameters. (In past times I used ?t=… and ?h=… cache-busting URLs for stylesheet URLs; and I decided I’m okay breaking such requests; there shouldn’t be any legitimate ones.) Want to see what happens if you add a query string? Go ahead, try it. It’s my website: I can do what I want with it. And you can do what you want with yours! This is currently implemented in my Caddyfile.