@peterverkooijen, @eborg9, if you guys are having issues then hire a developer to make a plugin. You could simply edit the template files (I think)
Create a First Name and Last name profile field. In the template files wherever http://pastebin.com/57Sm4VNu appears replace it with http://pastebin.com/hESCVX9D
Something along those lines.
What i have to do if i have a fresh wordpress 3.0 and buddypress 1.2.4 installation? i have no backup because i haven’t used it.
@eborg9 (“I’m not going to insult the decision to code it that way…”) I have argued your point for over a year, more diplomatically at first, with zero effect. The developer community here doesn’t care about this issue. In my comment I simply gave the reasoning I got from Andy (Automattic). Anonymous usernames rule in the WordPress world. Don’t hold your breath for it to change anytime soon. You’ll have to custom code around it.
@r-a-y (“There are no conspiracy theories involved.”) I think my ugly hacked solutions were deleted because they used a deprecated hook and parts of it were supposedly fixed in 1.2+ according to one moderator. Don’t remember the details.
@apeatling will be releasing it as a plugin soon (or at least what i’ve read a few times 
)
I’d like to use buddypress-links instead of “home”. How can I do that?
Is there a similiar functionality as it is for the activity stream?
Hi Paul,
Just noticed that this plugin and R-A-Y’s ‘BuddyPress Usernames Only’ plugin are incompatible as when the usernames only plugin is actvive NO names show under the Friends Pop down in Welcome pack.
Any way to make them compatible?
Thanks
Ross 
Maybe we should ask this question in a spammer’s forum
Andy Peatling once told me it was more of a WPMU problem (are you using WPMU?). But I have also heard people reporting the problem only arises once BuddyPress is activated. I don’t know, sorry.
I reduced Sploggers to about 20 per day, which is OK for the time being to handle (but of course quite annoying). Looking forward to solutions – as we all are, I guess. I can’t imagine anyone not having this problem – since I have so much spam on a hardly known site.
Ok! That’s a vast improvement! Doh! Sitewide Activation…what a thing to miss.
@shawnkhall Yep! That fixed most issues. The only one I can see now (just having a quick look, not a thorough test), is that the Group Avatars are not showing up in the ‘Groups’ Widgets….but they are showing ok on the ‘Groups’ page on the Primary Blog. It would be nice to be able to fix that, but it’s hardly what I’d call a Major Issue. Thanks again for your help.
@Travel-Junkie…yep! That worked fine too…thanks
Cheers
Stephen G
@shawnkhall and @Travel-Junkie
Thanks guys…I’ll give it a whirl.
Cheers
Stephen G
@mrjarbenne, thanks for posting your process here–I’ve had the same issue, and now I know that I need to work with my plugins.
@noshitwft, sounds like you enabled BP from the upgrade screen. Disable BuddyPress, then go back to the plugins page and re-enable it sitewide. That should fix many of your issues, but not the blog lists one. Working on a fix for that now.
Oh! And it may be worth noting that BuddyPress used to appear in the Site-Wide Plugins list in WPMU…it now appears in the normal plugins list…which would in theory (I have checked it and I’m not going to try), that Users would be able to Activate/Deactivate BP via their Blog Admin (unless of course I hid it).
Geez!
Stephen G
Before upgrade i backup my data. Now restored that defective?
Ben, no, BP should work with WP/MU (MU is now “WP+MS”, for multisites).
Switch back to the twentyten theme. Disable BuddyPress. Can you log in as a non-admin user?
@russnm – the avatar problem has been reported (#2400) and @r-a-y‘s contributed a solution. There may be several avatar problems.
Please someone report any other issues, including this blog list one, to https://trac.buddypress.org/. I’m wondering if something added for WP 3.0 has broken WP 2.9.x installs.
@erich73 — “seems like BP 1.2.4 was tested with testbp.org only.” Sorry, but that’s ridiculous. I for one have been using what become 1.2.4 on WP/MU 2.9-3.0 since work started on it. The testbp site is to let people try out BuddyPress and learn what it is, without having to setup their own install; it’s not for testing code (although it is handy for validating bugs).
Very strange problem, I’ve not seen this before. What do you see in your web server error logs when you visit the forum?
“You keep telling me that real names are used through out the installation and I am telling you that they are not. The members directory, one of the most important sections of this thing for any organization, list users by their username.”
It doesn’t*. We’re looking at http://testbp.org/members/. ‘registered’ and ‘last active’ will order by those values, and it displays real names. If you order by ‘alphabetical’, however, I see a few issues:
*Page 1 of results is not sorting properly, at least on testbp.org; something weird is going on. But if you click through to page 5, for example, it does sort by real name correctly (“Aaron Brazell, Aaron Castaneda, Aaron Chaote”, etc). If you look at the link to their profile, that uses the username (as is designed), and in the case of Aaron Brazell, as an example, you see his username is nothing like his real name. But not on page 1.
This is obviously a bug, as the latter pages work, and this is useful feedback. The BuddyPress developers can only fix bugs if people report them (https://trac.buddypress.org/).
@peterverkooijen – as far as I know, none of your posts have been deleted. Some threads closed, yes, but not deleted. I’ve noticed too that some older forum posts are really hard to find since this site was updated a few weeks ago (so I look through Google, as BuddyPress search still sucks).
I followed the steps here…https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-fb-autoconnect/installation/
One thing to remember if you are using buddypress is to uncheck the box that says “Disable BuddyPress filters”. When you initially install the plugin that box is checked, but since you’re using buddypress you don’t want to disable the filters.
I Hope that helps.
@r-a-y
I have added your line:
define( 'BP_AVATAR_URL', 'http:///nijmegeneet.nl/club/wp-content/uploads' );
to my bp-custom.php
That works fine. Thanks for helping me out!
@peterverkooijen – There are no conspiracy theories involved. If you have a solution, post it. I’ll make sure it doesn’t get deleted.
—
@eborg9 – the concept is quite simple. A username is something you login with, the “Name” field as mentioned here shows your real name in all places (except @mentions). The signup process is similar to that of Twitter’s.
I’m not going to insult the decision to code it that way, and I love the software and appreciate the work, but a community of usernames works great for forums, Developers, and game geeks, but organizations of regular people, search directories for their colleagues names, not their WOW monikers.
Anyone that is blogging as a marketing tool, wants their real name, or company name associated with their blog and activities.
Usernames are for web people. Real People use real names.
If we are to apply Buddypress for real communities and organizations, then usernames is a bit juvenile and in many instances, unprofessional.
Limiting the option also limits how you can implement the platform.
I really would like to see BP mature so that we can apply it to any situation. Usernames or nicknames should be an option. You shouldn’t have to hack the core to allow regular people to use their real names.
I noticed the same problem. I don’t know if it had been there all along and I just hadn’t noticed, but I just upgraded to Buddypress 1.2.4. I’m also using the the BuddyPress Template Pack to create a custom theme. To work around the problem, I replaced:
<?php bp_user_link() ?>
with:
<?php bloginfo(‘url’) ?>/members/<?php bp_displayed_user_username() ?>
How is it possible? You can’t use caps or spaces when creating a username and Buddypress uses usernames..so how can I let me people use their real names. No usernames anywhere. I don’t want them to show anywhere on the site, only for log in purposes.
It’s over complicated. why not just use your name, however you want to write it? If you decide that you want to put a username in the name field then so be it, but why have so many different name options…username, real name, display name…I mean c’mon.
All I want is that when you go to the directory you see people’s real names. when you view the activity stream, you see peoples real names. No user names. Just plain old first and last name that they put in their profile info.
If someone registers and their name is “John Smith” I would like him to be referred to all over the site and listed as “John smith”. When you go to the Directory, I would like his name to be seen, “John Smith” not his username.
How do I make that happen?
I’m wondering if this has to be fixed in a BuddyPress version or in a WPMU version (coming closer to WP Single)? I agree it is a huge issue since most/all installs that are active in the meantime (meaning the “older” installs) will be running WPMU.
