Thanks for your reply. Yes, that seems to make sense. Currently on a number of other sites like http://wow-heroes.com for example, you can enter the character name and choose the realm the character exists on from a dropdown list.
That said, I guess the first step in my journey is to learn how to pull in data from an outside source in to the user profile? Something simple to start with… user enters their favorite song, which imports a YouTube video of the song if its available, for example.