$_SERVER['PATH_INFO']

For example, create a php file named profile.php and in there put:

<?php echo $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']; ?>

Then upload the file and load it with yourServerPath/profile.php/dodo. The script will print out

/dodo

In my profile.php, I get the user by doing a simple sub string command like:

$user = substr($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], 1); // this will get rid of the leading slash

This allows me to feed users to my profile.php by using the url dodosmb.com/profile.php/username

That’s still not pretty enough; it’s better if I can do dodosmb.com/profile/username. This is where .htaccess rewrite comes in. Here’s a great tutorial for .htaccess rewrite rules. To accomplish my goal, I used the following rewrite rules in my .htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^profile/([A-Za-z0-9]+)/$ /profile.php/$1
RewriteRule ^profile/([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ /profile.php/$1