3 little questions about subdomain w/ php portal

[alwaysinit]

1.Are there other methods of creating member profile pages in a portal other than creating a subdomain for each member?
2.If so, how do these other methods compare to creating the "subdomain for each member" method?
3.Is creating a subdomain for each member just hands down the best way to do this?

[Ninjakreborn]

1.Are there other methods of creating member profile pages in a portal other than creating a subdomain for each member?
If it's just one file then just create them a .php file, and that file can be there member page.  if it's more than one create them more than one page.
2.If so, how do these other methods compare to creating the "subdomain for each member" method?
a sub-domain allows them to easily get to there page, through your url with
something.something.com
like if your site is www.fredspalace.com
and someone on your site had a member page called dave it would be
dave.fredspalace.com
or whatever else the domain name is before freds palace.  The different in the other method I told you, is it's at the end, and harder to remember sometimes instead it would be
like for instance if you saved member files in a folder called members it would be
www.fredspalace.com/members/dave.php
he would have to type all of that, to get to his file.  Unless you did some work with php and htaccess(or mode rewrite), to do some url reworking.
3.Is creating a subdomain for each member just hands down the best way to do this?
pretty much, but everyone has there own opinions.