We are not going to discuss the profiles capability of .NET for the same reason that we chose not to write about the membership capabilities of .NET. This topic is widely covered in many books and on many of the top blog sites. We thought it might be more interesting to discuss a custom implementation of creating a profile and dynamic attributes so that a member's profile could be expanded with time. Also, this will get us a bit deeper into LINQ and how our framework works.
Another interesting topic that must be discussed absolutely while building profiles is avatars. An avatar is a small icon or image that is associated with each user's profile. This allows you to visually pick a profile out of the group with ease. Generally, an avatar is displayed next to just about everything a user does or interacts with. This could be their blog posts, forum posts, comments, and so on. It provides a sort of virtual face-to-face feeling.
Of course, we could take an easier approach and not allow...