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Thread: Too many name fields

February 4th, 2010 #1

ancient-geek

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Too many name fields
I hate to sound negative, I'm not, I really love this product. But I feel some tweaking is in order.....

I'm still developing my site, it's nearly ready and I was doing some of my own user acceptance testing when I noticed how many different fields there are for putting a name in.

Firstly, a user registers a name, say 'Titch'. But 'titch' is already taken so he uses titch45
Then he goes to his profile and it asks his name, at this point he decides not to enter anything because, well who cares right?
He's just posting a classified to sell his old armchair he doesn't care to give his name out. Maybe later. I mean the same add is running in the local paper and that just has his phone number.
Then he posts and ad where it asks for a name (mandatory) - not sure what to put here so he sticks in 'Armchair Boy'. You know what people are like.
The ad is posted and when he sees other people putting their names in he goes back to the profile puts his real name in. 'Billy Short' and then he sees the nickname field so he puts in 'Titch' coz that's his nickname.

So now he has the following names:
User name: Titch45
First name: Billy
Last name: Short
Nickname: Titch
Name on ad: Armchair Boy

Now when he sees Display name, he has a fit. I mean some of the folks in my town will have trouble adding the two little numbers at the bottom of the submission so we don't want to tax them too hard.
(I've been in IT support for many years and you wouldn't believe how dopey people can be when sitting in front of a computer).

So, anyway titch isn't too dumb so he picks his nickname as the display name.
But guess what? The name 'Armchair Boy' still appears on the listing.

It gets worse.
Sally sees the listing and sees the name 'Armchair Boy' as the seller's name and clicks it.
That takes her to the 'About Titch' profile name which DOESN'T show his full name.

Yikes.

I'm going to have a go at hacking these files down to a managable set of names. I don't really think anyone would care too much about giving their full name, let alone setting up a profile , except perhaps traders like car dealers.
I may do something like lose the real names and make the nickname mandatory and feed that through to the post page. I will have to think it through.

If anybody else has been successful in similar changes I would appreciate a short cut. Or perhaps some thoughts on what would be a good set of requirements for what is simply a local town classifieds site.

Cheers.
February 4th, 2010 #2

ancient-geek

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Re: Too many name fields
I think I cracked it. Cut out a few lines here and there. Changed a few others, wasn't too difficult. I'll compile a how-to if anyone's interested.
February 4th, 2010 #3

pepsi

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Re: Too many name fields
Yes we'd love if you would share please. Thanks.

And btw.. very entertaining description of your problem
February 4th, 2010 #4

sarge

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Re: Too many name fields
I got so wrapped up in the story, I forgot there was a problem

A tutorial would be nice.

Always treat everyone with respect and courtesy, but trust no one.
February 5th, 2010 #5
ancient-geek

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Re: Too many name fields
OK, I tried to compile some notes here, I've done some other tweaks like adding a mandatory post code but here is what I did to minimise the names used.
In short, I completely removed the First Name and Last Name requirement in the profile. Then, I wanted the nickname to populate the name field when posting an ad. If there is no nickname it will use the login name.They can still change this, but that's their lookout. And just for tidyness, I took the name fields of the dropdown list in the Display Name field.
Here are my notes:

When posting a new ad. To change the pre-populated name field from User's real name to the nickname:
In post-form.php
In the line (about line 187) that starts: <label for="name_owner"><?php _e('Name','cp'); ?>

Replace this part at the END OF THE LINE:
Code:

value="<?php if ($current_user->user_firstname != "") { echo stripslashes($current_user->user_firstname) ." ". stripslashes($current_user->user_lastname); } else { echo stripslashes($_POST['name_owner']); }?>" />
With:
Code:

value="<?php if ($current_user->nickname != "") { echo stripslashes($current_user->nickname); } else { echo stripslashes($_POST['name_owner']); }?>" />
Note that if there is no nickname it will use the name_owner field which is the login name.

OR. If you prefer to use the login name instead of the nickname, then there is no need for an if-statement replace with this instead
Code:

value="<?php echo stripslashes($current_user->user_login); ?>" />
Now, this bit is optional, but I wanted to get rid of the requirement for First Name and Last Name altogether.
So, these fields need to come off the profile page which is tpl-profile.php

Quite simply, remove these lines:
Code:

<tr> <th><label for="first_name"><?php _e('First Name','cp') ?></label></th> <td><input type="text" name="first_name" class="mid2" id="first_name" value="<?php echo $userdata->first_name ?>" size="35" maxlength="100" /></td> </tr> <tr> <th><label for="last_name"><?php _e('Last Name','cp') ?></label></th> <td><input type="text" name="last_name" class="mid2" id="last_name" value="<?php echo $userdata->last_name ?>" size="35" maxlength="100" /></td> </tr>
And then, to prevent them showing up in the drop down list for 'Display Name'
remove these lines, also in tpl-profile.php
Code:

$public_display['display_firstname'] = $userdata->first_name; $public_display['display_firstlast'] = $userdata->first_name.' '.$userdata->last_name; $public_display['display_lastfirst'] = $userdata->last_name.' '.$userdata->first_name;
February 6th, 2010 #6

lappyhappy

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Re: Too many name fields
Would you know how to change the display name in the ads so that is displays the username instead of real name?
February 6th, 2010 #7
ancient-geek

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Re: Too many name fields
I think that's a little more tricky, because it is using the author name of the post. You can see it displayed in single.php around 114.
Code:

<span><?php _e('Posted By:','cp');?></span> <h1> <?php if (get_the_author() != "") { ?> <?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "name", true); ?> <?php } else { echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "name", true); } ?> </h1>
I don't know if it's enough to change it here or go back and change the author name at source. I'm not a very good php programmer so it would take a bit of trial and error.