Portrait photography with point and shoot camera

Portrait photography or "people" photography will be quite a difficult region for those who have just started using a point and shoot cameras. You may go on taking pictures of your friends, relatives and yourself and wont  be able to share it to them because you find it ugly. Actually, i have undergone these in my life and has always thought it was my face which is causing the problem.
The first rule of portrait photography is to understand that no person looks ugly. If the photo of them look ugly, then its the photographers problem. Just look at your photo of school id.
Here are some tips to improve your portrait photos

1. Never do it in Auto Mode : Switch to program mode or dedicated portrait mode
2. Turn of the flash : flash can never replace natural lighting. It will make the skin look oily, and sometimes overexposed, if the person is too near to the camera. This is because in almost every camera's flash power isn't adjustable. But if the absence of any external lighting methods you wont have much options and have to go with flash
3. Location : First of all find a nice location. This doesn't mean you cant take good photos in your home itself. you can find nice location there also. Such as on the stairs, or on the open terrace etc. I personally prefer outdoors rather than indoors.. 
4. Time : Also time is also important. You wouldn't want to take you photos at afternoon time, because of too much sunlight. It will make the photos overexposed. Also there is a possibility of sweating. This factor doesn't affect indoor photography.
5. For close up photos don't go near to subject. Rather go far from him. Use the zoom. Let the camera detect the face (if it has such features). Compose your image and click. This is rather important point. Because if you take the photo without zoom it will distort the image.
6. Fading out of background : You will be always amazed to see dslr photos producing sharp pictures of the model and all the background is just faded out. In point ans shoot also we can produce that but with little adjustments. First of all zooming in to the model as described int he previous point. Also the background objects should be far away from the model as possible. 
7. Shoot at different angles and eye levels rather than mugshot types. Each person has their own most beautiful position. Look in the screen and make them adjust their posture to look as good as possible.