Separate username (displayed) and login - is it possible?
 

I need users not to know each other's logins (user.username in VB's DB) (logins will be generated automatically and meaningless - integration with number of other projects). The names users see all around the board, search posts by, etc must be separate from usernames they login with.

These displayed names will not necessarily be unique, so we can not authorize users using them.

I did see boards with separate login and username, even on VB (as far as I can remember) - but can't find anything like a mod to do it on this site.

Only idea I have now is adding field user.username_displayed and changing half the code of the board to use it instead of user.username. Haha... not funny at all.

Do you have any suggestions? Mods, ideas about how to do it without breaking the board compeltely? Thanks in advance.

Its not meant to be :D

You can do as you described, or you can create a profile field called "Display Name" and replace all instances with that. Of course you'll have issues as members can use the same "Display Name" as another member, which will wreck havoc.