Are you tired of seeing in your forums usernames like these?:
1.- The Super Boy (spaces)
2.- my_new_name (underscore abuse)
3.- im?a??nd?b?ar (international characters)
Well, with this simple addon you can prevent that from happening from now on (it can't correct already spoiled usernames). When a user tries to register using one of those chars, a nice error message makes sure the user picks another "normal" name.
Installation instructions
1.- Download the attached .xml
2.- Go to Admin Control Panel => Plugin System => Manage Products => Add/Import Product => and browse for the the location where you downloaded the .xml
3.- Hit Import
4.- To configure it (not really needed, but it is there), go to Vbulletin Forum Options => Restrict Usernames on registration
By default this addon prevents spaces and any char other than numbers and (english) letters while allowing underscore.
**
Fixed to work with 3.6.8 and 3.7
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This modification may not be copied, reproduced or published elsewhere without author's permission.
What happens to users who already have illegal characters? Will they still be able to login or update their info?
This mod only affects future registrations. Existing users would have to have their names changed.
If I remember correctly, I think I saw somewhere a piece of Search and Replace SQL code you could use to do a massive search and replace. Of course you would be wise to back up your database first and email the users letting them know about the change in their names.
Cool, I'm fine with the existing members, I just want to restrict people who use email addresses as usernames. Ideally I'd love to be able to stop people using all uppercase names too but I guess we can't have everything.
Also ... If I wanted to allow more than one character (EG ~ and -) would I seperate them with spaces or commas?
LOL
This is a cool hack.
You know what, I will creat alots more user names with space, @, uppercase....I think around hundreds of them, then install this hack.
The result is, the user names I created will be .... RARE . It means I can trade for something else if a member want that nick so bad . LOL, just like Yahoo ! rare nicks.
Lol, just a thought, I am not going have free time just to sit there and manual add users. But I will wait untill my board get busy and lots of users sign up, then I will installed this hack. At that time my board will be crazy with rare nicks trading.
thanks again.
Thank you for writing this plugin. It is a complete asset!
The default username restriction seems exceptionary while this system is inclusionary, meaning the default system lets you create exceptions for what you can register, while this system lets you include what can be registered.
This is much better IMO because people could keep finding characters that you haven't put on your ban list, and you would have to make an exception for each one.
It is very important for sites like mine which in the end will have MediaWiki integrated into it. MediaWiki can only allow printable characters in page names, and page names can be user names, so user names must be only printable characters. This hack solves the problem.
Restrict usernames to alphanumeric and underscore Details »»
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02-02-2006, 04:43 PM
