Why does my PHP not recognize $_POST but $_REQUEST still works

[Freedom Coach]

I am an old school (mainframe) programmer trying to learn the new web technology. I was having a terrible time trying to get PHP to process a parameter passed from a form. It is apparently supposed to be automatic, but it didn't work for me.
When I changed the method to GET instead of POST on my INPUT HTML it started sending the data in the URL. I changed the method back to POST but the parameters are still being transmitted using an extended URL. When I finally figured out how to get the information to PHP from the $_POST array (THANKS TO THIS WEBSITE!) I had to change to $_REQUEST for it to work. I really don't want to generate a new URL every time the form gets used.

[Dormilich]

I changed the method back to POST but the parameters are still being transmitted using an extended URL.

are you sure you are using the POST method? if you have the data in the URL, it is definitely GET. and if it’s GET then $_POST won’t be populated.

the HTML should look somewhat like <form action="process .php" method="post">

[Freedom Coach]

It appears that I did not SAVE the change back to method="post". Sorry about the false alarm.