BuddyPress

Hi; I think that the “Name” field in the Base group of the profile should be changed to Username; because it is a little confusing.
And then add First Name and Last Name fields.

It would be great to be able to sort the members with their first or last name !

!!!

I find it all somewhat confusing as well… First Name, Last Name, Nice Name, Username, Email… too many options. I think it’s much better from a usability point of view to sign in using your email address… because users don’t remember usernames. But that has nothing to do with BuddyPress. The way login works is a WordPress thing I presume.

The “Name” field used to be called “Nickname” (I think), back in pre-1.0. You should have seen how much discussion *that* caused on IRC when we were discussing if that should be renamed.

Ha

BTW… 2 seconds of searching on Google and I found a plugin to allow users to use their email address to login. I’m going to be plugging that in for sure. One less thing for users to have to remember and bug me about.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-email-login/

@DJPaul : Yes, nickname is a better appelation ! Why does this have change ? And why can’t this field be renamed in the admin (Profile Field Setup) ?

@David : great ! I’ll use it too.

But this doesn’t help me for what I want to do : display users in the member component following there name, not their nickname.

…How could I do ?
1) Can I change the field name in phpMyAdmin or is it a bad idea ?
2) How can I display Name+Firstname when listing users,instead of Name (Nickname I mean)
3) How can I order members in the directory following Name then Firstname ?

Here’s a piece of code to replace the displayed nickname by name+firstname.
change $first_name_field_id and $name_field_id to match your fields.

/**
NAME + FIRSTNAME | START
*/
function user_name_firstname($fullname,$user_id=false) {
global $bp;
global $site_members_template;

$first_name_field_id=40;
$name_field_id=39;

if ( !$user_id ) $user_id=bp_get_the_site_member_user_id();

if ( function_exists(‘xprofile_install’) ) {
$first_name= xprofile_get_field_data($first_name_field_id, $user_id );
$name = xprofile_get_field_data($name_field_id, $user_id );

if ($name) {
$fullname = $name;
if ($first_name) $fullname.=’ ‘.$first_name;
}

wp_cache_set( ‘bp_user_fullname_’ . $user_id, $fullname, ‘bp’ );
}

return apply_filters( ‘user_name_firstname’, $fullname );
}

add_filter( ‘bp_get_the_site_member_name’, ‘user_name_firstname’,9);
/**
NAME + FIRSTNAME | END
*/

Now I have to find a way to order the directory member results by Name+Firstname… Any idea ?

just recognized that there is only ONE “Name”-field.

Why not use “First Name” and “Last Name” ?

I wrote a plugin :

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/new-plugin-buddypress-real-names

No firstname/lastname because this does not work for a lot of international users.

@Andy,

so why is “username” , “e-mail” and “password” not sufficient ?
Why do we need an additional field called “Name” ?

Sorry, I do not get it…….

Question:
can I skip this “Name”-field from my website or will I run into trouble if I do so ?

Thanx

BuddyPress uses the “display name” to know that they have filled out some profile information. It is the only *always* required field inside BuddyPress.

Because WordPress is centered around the “username” and uses the “nicename” for slug purposes, we’re stuck with those no matter what. I like having my username be short for easy log ins if I can help it of course (sometimes “jjj” is already taken.), but I like my display name be my fullname because it’s how people recognize me.

I don’t see a way around this any time soon. And like Andy said, internationally sometimes people have 4 or more names. I use my middle name, but having a “middle name” field isn’t always optimal either so I lump it in with my first name. (All those years of my mom yelling “John James you get over here this instant!!” must have stuck with me.)

You can rename the primary name field to be whatever you’d like, which is designed to alleviate some of the confusion. It lets you decide what that field means to your users. The “username” is the only thing they can’t change, so they’re using that for life.

Thanks JJJ,

so if I understand correctly, I could tell my users to insert “First-name and Last-name” into the field called “Name” ?

Would this work technically ?

@Erich73 I created a Last_Name and First_Name field so that I could do directory stuff just like you said. The only thing we’re stuck with is the Display name field, which some find annoying and some actually like. Considering all the over the top registrations we have all done before, this isn’t the worst. Facebook has it figured out, using emails as usernames and First name and Last Name when appropriate because it is more conducive to engagement. That’s the most important thing: what gets your users to engage – seeing LadiesMan269 doing an action or John Smith?

Definitely LadiesMan269.
There are too many John Smith’s in the world j/k

Hi Mike,

I still would like to know whether it would work to tell my users to write their “First Name” and their “Last Name” into ONE field called “Name” ?

like, e.g. putting the full name “John Smith” into the “Name”-field.

Typically my users would type “John space Smith”.

Will this be working technically (including the space) ?