Quote:

David...thanks for cleaning up the URL

Well, I have to say that for my needs and my particular "community based" portal, this feature is totally pointless overkill. Very rarely would you have hackers trying to hack into my accounts and if they did, there really would not be much of any interest to find in a "general users" profile.

Now having this feature for the ADMINISTRATORS account would be very useful, I agree. But for general registration and users it is not needed on I guess 95% of XOOPS based websites.

Even making the ability for users to change their displayname OPTIONAL but still having the burden/confussion of having to enter both a displayname AND username for new registrations is not desireable. Admins should have the freedom to have it COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT to the users of his site. And simply use the old/established ONE CONSTANT username system

Like I say, I agree that it would be a good security feature for ADMIN / MOD accounts but (for most sites) us admins do not really want our users to have to deal with what a USERNAME is vs. what a DISPLAYNAME is. It's just unescassry baggage and clutter duering a new user registration!

Hi XOOPS Users,

This is a protest thread which will hopefully encourage the XOOPS Development Team to _REMOVE_ or at least make OPTIONAL the new "Displayname" field / feature from the XOOPS system.

Please read the following thread for more of an insight into some of the difficulties it is causing XOOPS Admins: Click here

If you haven't yet come across this new obscure addition to XOOPS v2.2.*, basically what it is is a new field added to the registration called DISPLAYNAME. This field/variable in XOOPS is displayed to other users rather than their loginname. So basically their login name is hidden and secret and they have a displayname which is shown to the public.

All well and good you may think, but this new whacky feature also allows your users to *CHANGE* their displayed name *WHENEVER* they feel like it. For example: no longer do your users have to be quite as cautious about their behaviour on your boards because if they get a bad reputation they can simply CHANGE their name and conceal their old community Identity. Not so cool for communities which rely on the immediate identification and REFERENCE of display names that have become "know" on the site.

Many communities are built around it's users and in this world of constantly changing identities and confussion over who is REALLY who on the net, the ONE SINGLE constant you hope to be able to rely on is a board member's USERNAME. It is the key to that user and they are not able to cloak or mystify themselves by SUDDENLY changing their DISPLAYEDNAME...........THAT IS UNTIL XOOPS 2.2.* allowed them this luxury!

The worst thing about this silly new feature is that it is COMPULSORY to your XOOPS system. You as the Admin have no control over this feature! There is no way to configure this out of your Extended Profile module.

XOOPS DEV TEAM....please listen before this DISPLAYNAME variable becomes too INGRAINED in the general system and 3rd party modules. This is not a "cool new security feature", it is a DESIGN BUG which 95% of Admins do not want or need! Unix Systems(the most *SECURE* OS/servers known to man) have gone decades without such a silly system...so why does XOOPS need this??

If you feel it really IS necassary to Xoops, please make it OPTIONAL because most of us Admins will want the freedom to tick the "This feature is Not Wanted" check-box.

DEAR READER....please support this protest by posting your desire to see this feature REMOVED or at least made optional.

Thank you!

and the fact that there is not a single reply from any of the XOOPS Devs regarding this BUG IN THEIR DESIGN proves they probably do not actually *LISTEN* to what their users want. And the fact that they dont listen to their users is probably why they thought it was a good idea to include this ridiculously obscure feature in the first place.

I'm currently wasting a lot of time trying to remove this code from all php scripts and forms. It's not easy as the DISPLAYNAME field is quite imbedded in the general Extended Profile module and its scripts. So far I have removed it from the registration process and all works well by replacing this silly DISPLAYNAME (uname) variable with the regular loginname variable in all profile scripts.

I just have one problem when I try to edit a new registration...whenever I submit an edit to a profile I'm getting the error message "uname required". It's not immediately obvious to me where in the scripts this request is comming from atm.....so if anyone has any ideas PLEASE POST. Perhaps one of the XOOPS Devs would care to shed some light on this considering theyre the ones who created this unnecessary problem in the first place???????

Quote:

This has to be the most idiotic "feature" I've come across so far duering my short spell with Xoops. Why on EARTH the XOOPS development team thought it would be a good idea to allow users to chop and change their displayed name whenever they felt like it, and in so doing cause not only confussion to other members but also admins, is BEYOND me!!

Sure, I understand the "security" issue, but if you (the XOOPS dev-team) felt it needed to be included AT LEAST put in the effort to make it an OPTIONAL administrative feature and not compulsory. Not all admins want thier users changing their visual names whenever they feel like it - FOR OBVIOUS REASONS!

For god sake...remove this stupid addition in the next update or else you'll lose many potential XOOPS users. It's just not something most Admins want or indeed even NEED. Do your research Xoops!

I just hope I can find a hack to remove this crap or else I'm going to have to switch over to Drupal