Subdomains, wildcard dns, mod_rewrite

Help...

[MrSpeed]

I want to create a brand new site that is perfect for using subdomains, up to about 50.

While searching for hosts it seems like some treat subdomains as a regular domains and charge extra/month for each subdomain.

I poured through some posts here and came across threads regarding wildcard dns, mod_rewrite etc.

From what I have gathered using the DNS to route surfers would be considered a "true" subdomain. Using mod_rewrite is kind of a fake out. I also saw a post by littleman on how to modify the httpd.conf file to do this.

So in a nutshell what is the easiest and cheapest way for me to do this?
I'd rather have the power to add subdomains myself.
By using mod_rewrite does it send out a redirect header?

Any recommendations?

[DaveAtIFG]

I have no first hand experience to share and I'm not clear on what "wildcard DNS" really means. It seems apparent that you're looking for Apache hosting. All I can offer is that I know of one leading hosting company that sets up subdomains for a one time fee, not a recurring monthly fee. But you need to work through their support folks to make it happen... Not much help I'm afraid...

Several of our members offer commercial hosting. Help us out here guys! :)