BuddyPress.org

hello,

i’m new to the forum and to buddypress. i recently created a new website and installed buddypress on it. my site is pokerenthusiastnetwork.com my theme is oner 1.0.7. buddypress 2.8.2

i’m a complete layman when it comes to technology. it’s been a struggle for me to get a webpage set up, but i’ve been making slow progress. however, the issue i’m having now is over my head. here is the issue:

i want people to be able to sign up to my site without having to give their real name. just a username is what i need. however, buddypress requires both a name and username. i’ve had a look through the forums and i have learned that it is impossible to remove these. i read two possible solutions to this problem:

1. use a form in place of the registration field.
this post https://buddypress.org/support/topic/how-to-delete-the-name-field-from-registration/ recommends using gravity forms. i searched for gravity forms within the plugin section of wordpress, but i couldn’t find it. i could find it in a google search, but it looks like it isn’t free. i have a different plugin for forms, wpforms lite. could i use this instead of gravity forms and get the desired result?

2. hide the name field using css
https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5373?cversion=0&cnum_hist=3 says this is possible. in this case, my understanding is that the name field would still exist, but it wouldn’t be visible to people during the registration process, and would be automatically populated with whatever they enter into the username field. is this correct? i have no experience at all with coding, and i couldn’t understand from the thread how i could implement this solution.

so, my question is two fold:

first, which of these solutions is preferable? i want to choose the one that is easiest for a layman to handle, which would seem to be solution 1. however, i don’t want to run into any problems down the line, as i’ll have no idea how to fix them. could this solution create problems for me?

second, if i go with solution two, how do i go about it? i’ve got no idea what css is, let alone how to alter it. i’d be really appreciative if someone could give me a step by step, bearing in mind that i have zero experience with it.

thank you in advance!