Change your profile username

[Chloe]

Although you can of course change your Display Name any time you wish, I can't see any rational reason why you can't change your actual username.

When I first joined, I was Equanox, but then everyone started calling me Noxy, so I changed my Display Name to Noxy. Other FMs have done similar changes, but this makes sending PMs an unnecessary pain because you have to figure out what they were all called before!

So being able to change your Profile Name, and thus not even needing a Display Name as that would pose the same function, would be a welcome tweak to PB v5.

[®i©hie]

Jul 12, 2012 13:19:01 GMT -8 Chloe said:

Although you can of course change your Display Name any time you wish, I can't see any rational reason why you can't change your actual username.

When I first joined, I was Equanox, but then everyone started calling me Noxy, so I changed my Display Name to Noxy. Other FMs have done similar changes, but this makes sending PMs an unnecessary pain because you have to figure out what they were all called before!

So being able to change your Profile Name, and thus not even needing a Display Name as that would pose the same function, would be a welcome tweak to PB v5.

Hi,

in V5 you can actually do a search on the pm send page, to look up users.

[CT]

I can see why they would not allow changing usernames. If there are any codes specific to your username (name color, etc) changing your username would break the code.

[RedBassett]

Jul 16, 2012 12:48:41 GMT -8 CT said:

I can see why they would not allow changing usernames. If there are any codes specific to your username (name color, etc) changing your username would break the code.

Also a large portion of the backend code relies on usernames (hence the ability to re-link posts, etc).

[Chris]

Jul 16, 2012 13:18:47 GMT -8 RedBassett said:

Jul 16, 2012 12:48:41 GMT -8 CT said:

I can see why they would not allow changing usernames. If there are any codes specific to your username (name color, etc) changing your username would break the code.

Also a large portion of the backend code relies on usernames (hence the ability to re-link posts, etc).

That actually might have changed to user IDs for the most part... however, usernames are still used for @username in posts and quotes.

[RedBassett]

Jul 16, 2012 13:21:11 GMT -8 Chris said:

Jul 16, 2012 13:18:47 GMT -8 RedBassett said:

Also a large portion of the backend code relies on usernames (hence the ability to re-link posts, etc).

That actually might have changed to user IDs for the most part... however, usernames are still used for @username in posts and quotes.

More in reference to V4, but yes, I hope they have migrated to IDs (and given the profile URLs, I think they have).

[Ryan Roos]

We won't be adding username modification. While we respect the fact that a username may become outdated or vary from your display name it is used to identify you. While a lot of things in v5 use your user ID a lot of things don't. If you were to change your username all of the @tags that exist would break. All quotes from you would break. Or worse, someone changes to your username after you have made a new one and suddenly all quotes and @tags go to them. These are just a couple examples of why this won't work. There are even more worse examples on the back end where we would not want you changing your username. In v5 it is very simple to create new accounts (new username) and if you have a friendly admin they could adjust the post count for you. But again think about the fact that all your quotes, etc. wont link to you anymore.

Usernames are how staff identify you as well. Very often people change display names. But a staff member can always keep track of people using their usernames. If those were to suddenly change as well it would be impossible to identify users.