Possible to use "Real Name" instead of Username?

[shutterfreak]

Originally Posted by Videx

I'm not sure why you're posting in this thread, as the virtual names hack you're working on doesn't bear any resemblance to what the OP was asking for. Maybe you should be posting over in the programming forum so people could assist with that aspect.

The OP asked for a possibility to use 2 tokens for identifying a member: the "user name" and the "real name". From what I made from the OP's question, and given the fact that vBulletin does not make the distinction between a login name and a display name, I understand that the OP wants to separate the user authentication bit (with "user name" in his post) from the way a member is known on a vBulletin board (with "real name" in his post).

In my approach I'm basically doing precisely this. However I use "login name" instead of "user name", and I use "user name" instead of "real name".

Technically the same approach.

Originally Posted by Videx

I'm sure if I think about it I can think of several administrative options with virtual names. Like - how many people could use the same name? I guess there's no technical reason everyone on the board couldn't just use the same virtual name.

My approach uses the same type of validation to check for existing user names (e.g., valid characters, cleanup etc as provided by vBulletin for the username field). In addition I check the login name for uniqueness.

In the case of the OP there still ought to be a unique identifier or vBulletin and the members of that board will be confused about which of the 5 "John Doe" members a certain participant is. For the OP this could e.g. be realized by:

1. enforcing unique login names
2. allowing non-unique display names (the names by which a member can be identified while participating on the boards)
3. making an avatar photo mandatory at registration

I do not claim to be a vBulletin expert. If you are willing to share your insights, please do so.

Originally Posted by Videx

Oh, and don't even think of releasing this as a mod until there are no template edits.

There is no way to implement this without adding the 2nd user name field (login name in my case) to the 'register' template bit. Indeed, how can vBulletin know that this field needs to be rendered (and when)?

Unless you refer to user profile fields. And then the "hack" will be much more complicated to implement IMHO as you'll have to hunt for all places where a vBulletin user name is rendered and replace it with a new profile field. Plus, you won't have the possibility to do a lot of validation checks of that field.

So according to you, because of this simple template edit, this can't be posted as a mod?

Maybe we misunderstood each other here.