Parsing URLs
$url = 'http://www.example.com/example.php';
$url = substr($url, 0, strrpos($url, '.'));
var_dump($url);
// output is: string(30) "http://www.example.com/example"
URL Rewriting
In your .htaccess file you can use mod_rewrite to rewrite pretty URLs to their actual destination.
For example:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# If the URL does not already exist as a file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# or directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^example$ /example.php [QSA,L,NC]
The above will direct traffic hitting http://www.example.com/example to your example.php script.
Obviously replace example.com with your domain.
Subdomain option
Another option is to give your users a subdomain each. simon.sklaloot.com for example. I have previously answered a question pertaining to this: Create subdomains on the fly with .htaccess (PHP)