URL parameters question

Hi–newbie EE questions here.

I want to access URL parameters in a template. This is a two part question I suppose:

1) I’ve learned that the $_GET supervar is munched by EE upstream, so using $_GET to retrieve a URL parameter is out (?), and I’ve also tried:

$this->EE->input->get('parameter_name');

which also fails (returns FALSE) even though the parameter is present in URL…

So, is it possible to retrieve typical ‘?parameter_name=x’ parameters within a template?

2) I’m assuming that a better way to handle this is via a properly formatted friendly URL, ie:

/channel/template/parameter_name/value

but alas even though the EE docs allude to this capability, I am unable to find helpful instructions on how to configure such. Can somebody point me in the right direction on this?

Thanks!