URL randomisation?

Hi there

I'm embarking on yet another webassist-based website. Previously it's been a single-user admin, so the URL products_results.php?prodID=2 works great.

Now I'm creating a franchise site for individual users to log in and change their home-page so I want a long, randomised url (like what you see in ebay) so that it's not obvious for others to enter different numbers etc...

php?userID=2123tyhgbntre4uys2

The '2' at the beginning is the real ID this will make sure that whatever method is used each one will be unique.

I've been thinking about:

• Creating a column in the database which creates a 20 digit random number to use as the identifyer + the real id to guarantee none are the same,
• to use the randomized password column,
• to build in a nonsense bit of letters and numbers of the actual file itself.
• to hide the ID in the middle of two made up column numbers e.g (echo [col1] echo [userID] echo [col2]) so it would look like "qwerty2poiuy" and "qwert3poiuy"

Anybody know of the 'correct' way to do it or even to mask the userID= altogether?

Many thanks
Vanrooj