I am trying to customize a Buddypress installation to register people with their real names instead of creating usernames. I need a registration process that will collect your first name, last name in high school (maiden name), your current last name (married name) and display only your first name and last name in high school (and maybe also the current last name) within the community.

I would like the list of people registered in the community to only be visible to those who are approved and logged in. And as stated above when you are logged in people see your name as the name they knew you by in high school. Is there such a plug-in? I tried searching for it in the extend section but it is a big topic and a lot of stuff pulls up that isn’t what I can use. Thanks.

[@ehegwer Participant 14 years, 1 month ago]

Pretty easy. Just create some custom registration fields for each of the categories you want to collect. You can make them mandatory if you want, too.

Then to make things private you can use the BuddyPress Private Community plugin, and that would prevent prying eyes from seeing things they shouldn’t.

[@boonebgorges Keymaster 14 years, 1 month ago]

You can’t bypass usernames altogether, as they’re needed for (among other things) BP URLs like example.com/members/boonebgorges/profile. But you could autogenerate them from the user’s fullname. You’d need to hijack the registration process by filtering ‘bp_core_validate_user_signup’, unsetting the error that comes from not having a username, and then generate your own username with a bit of PHP. I’ve done specialized versions of this for clients, but a more generalized one would make for a nice plugin. Any volunteers?

[@pcgs51 Member 14 years, 1 month ago]

Thanks ehegwer I’ll look for the Private Community plugin. Thats what I needed to know. But still need the username thing. Looks like according to you Boone I’ll need more skills than I currently have. I hope there is a volunteer out there. I won’t mind the usernames so much IF they aren’t visible to the community. My audience will be confused by usernames. Remember these are people who actually already know each other already by real live names. I’m still tinkering with BuddyPress to see if it will work for my community. If I continue to be happy with my customizations I will be interested to know what your fees would be to create such a plug-in Boone.

[@ehegwer Participant 14 years, 1 month ago]

As for the usernames, I just added a note to the field that appears on registration. When people are signing up, and that mandatory username field pops up, I make sure users know that this is visible to the entire community. That way they know not to use something private. Most internet users know all about usernames, right?

[@pcgs51 Member 14 years, 1 month ago]

Most my community are used to this because we are migrating to a new CMS. We have to shut down a paid CMS solution and I will ask them to re-register at the new BuddyPress one. But yes, I will try to remember to make things very clear. I hope to only let people who are logged in see the names of my community members. But I would really rather have email addresses (non visible) used for login purposes. I want real names visible to the community. Most are used to the Classmates.com model of doing things which is exactly what I hope to simulate. I have been researching this in open source communities since 2004 and amazed that nobody has come up with a CMS/plugin that meets this need. I can pretty much find a plugin for everything else under the sun.