I must be dense. After asking several questions on StackOverflow, I am still at a loss when it comes to grasping the new routing engine provided with ASP.NET MVC. I think I\'v
What about
routes.MapRoute(
"Profiles",
"{userName}",
new { controller = "Profiles", action = "ShowUser" }
);
and then, in ProfilesController, there would be a function
public ActionResult ShowUser(string userName)
{
...
In the function, if no user with the specified userName is found, you should redirect to the default {controller}/{action}/{id} (here, it would be just {controller}) route.
Urls like www.twitter.com/login should be registered before that one.
routes.MapRoute(
"Login",
"Login",
new { controller = "Security", action = "Login" }
);