Unique User Names
 

Hello,

I wanted to know if there is a script / plugin (something) that can check the uniqueness of user names... in other words, if we have a user name "John," for example, then I don't want someone to be able to have the user name John1 or JohnABC...

Also, is there a way to have a list of flag words that are not acceptable user names (4 letter words, for example)?

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

For the second question,

vB Options > Registration Options > Illegal Usernames

Thanks... anyone have any ideas regarding the first part of my question i.e. 'unique user names" .... ?

I thinking doing the first is gonna be very difficult unless you just put those words into the Illegal Usernames after someone uses one. You are saying "John" is OK, but not "JohnS" or "John1" or "Johnxxxx" How do you envision writing code to do that without actually telling the code the name "John" explicitly which is what Illegal Usernames does?

Hi Lynne,

That's not exactly what I am saying... "John3," for example, would be ok - however, if someone choose "John3," then something very close to that "John," for example, would not be allowed.

If a member tries to choose a user name that is very similar to a preexisting name, I don't want them to get it.

So if a preexisting member has the user name "john," for example, then I don't want people going on and joining as "john1, "1john," "john2," "j0hn" etc

So basically, the script would need to recognize uniqueness

That's going to be very hard at the least and near impossible at the most.

If someone registers with 'John' then that would mean that nobody named 'Josephine' or 'Joanna' would be allowed? Or if someone named 'Ian' were to register, then nobody named 'Brian' would be allowed?

Basically what I'm saying is, where does it stop? How is a script supposed to know what is and is not a legal name?

Or do you just want to disallow numbers in names? Is it the numbers that bothers you?

Well, a good start would be character recognition... in other words, if a user name is "John," then the following would not be allowed:

John + any set of numbers.... therefore, Johnny would be allowed, however, John1, 3John, John5 would all not be allowed.

Then the system could also look at "John" and require two or more letters difference for the next user name... so "Johnny would be ok, but "Johhn" would not... then you could associated 0 and O etc

I agree, it can get complicated... I think AOL has some feature like this when selecting user names - I was just curious if Vbulletin already had something out there like that? If not, I may have to get something like that developed custom.

I have never seen anything like that as a vbulletin modification. I think if that's something important to you, you will have to code it yourself (or have someone else code it for you).