Using a mixture of real names and user names in forum

[SteveU]

I'm setting up a vB5 board, and for various reasons need to use a mixture of the member's real name and user name.

I have created a Custom Profile field and called it Real Name. Now if I wanted to use this throughout the forum, previous advice was to replace username and musername throughout the templates with this Real Name field.

However, this is not my objective. Users still need to log in with their username and password, but the real name, not the username needs to appear in the post bit, and also in things like the private message form.

I have used the search and have been able to list all the forms/templates that username or musername appear in, however, I don't know how to preview their function to know what I need to have appear in them, or if I need to use username, musername or Real Name for the desired result.

Is there any way to preview the templates I'm editing? Please can someone point tin the right direction if there are any tutorials or documentation on doing this?

Thanks in advance.

[Replicant]

There's no preview. Make your template change with the page containing that template loaded in another tab. Hit ctrl- F5 to refresh the page to see your changes. If you screw up the templates, you can revert them in the style manager page in the admincp. You should also turn off any webpage caching on your website while you are making changes.

[cellarius]

Test the changes on a test installation first, not your live board.

[SteveU]

Hi Cellarius,

The board is not yet live. Thanks for the warning.

Hi Replicant, thanks for the advice, I'm not that familiar with vB5, so how can I track down the page that the template exists in? For example, in Admin Templates, I have a template called admin_subscriberlist but can't easily find the pages/pages that use it. Please could you point me in the right direction, and thanks.

[Replicant]

I don't have that template in my system. I'm on 5.1.9. The only thing I have that is close is in the Group Admin Templates and it's sgadmin_subscriberlist. It would be good to know but templates aren't like modules. You can call a template from any other template with {vb:template and there is no way the software would know about it. You can see the templates used in a page by viewing the page source and keep a log of it so you have the info handy.

[SteveU]

Thanks very much. I'll start at page level and work back. I'll just need to start a spreadsheet to keep records.

Thanks very much for your help.