Solved Can I prevent users changing their "real name"?

In researching this topic for you, I found where one other person had asked a similar question (back in the days of K 1.7.2) here Disable "allow name change" and my advice then (in msg #8 of that topic) has not changed in the year-and-a-half since I wrote it:

sozzled wrote:

esaneigo wrote: Changing real names should be the job of the Administrator I think.

Some people may agree with you and a lot of people would not agree with you. It doesn't matter what I think.

Perhaps this could be a feature of a new version. Perhaps, if other people feel the same way as you do, they might like to donate to the Kunena project to see if this could be made a feature of a new version. :woohoo:

However, in searching this forum for other topics relating to what you have asked and, in the three years that Kunena has been around, I did not find anyone else asking us to make this change . So, I would have to say, you're probably the only person to feel strongly about this issue.

K 1.7.2 does not have the ability to prevent people changing their real name. That's just stating the fact.

But there are ways you can disable the "real name" input box if you want to hack the source code and make some custom change for yourself. If you use the HTML disabled attribute, the information will be displayed but no-one will be able to change it. Of course, the administrator can change the information at the backend.

Note: if you make any customised changes, you will be responsible for applying all those changes again whenever new versions of Kunena are released.

One other piece of friendly advice, in researching this topic for you I did not find other forum products that permit this kind of feature you have asked for, either. People should also remember that Kunena is the product of many years of design from many contributors - minds with far greater insight into how web-based discussion forums should operate in general. I am a strong believer in the principle that, in whatever web-based discussion forum I choose to join, the tools that allow me to see my user profile should allow me to change as much personal information about me as I can. I would not be happy if I could not change, for example, my "real name" in any way that I chose. For example, if I choose to use my genuine real name, I should be able to do that, but if I chose to disguise my "real name" (in order to retain some semblance of anonymity) I should also be able to do that, too.

Now, that's not just my opinion, of course. It's a kind of "rule of law" around web-based discussion forums and where sites do not allow users to control information they consider "personal" there should be clearly-stated information in the site's privacy policy to that effect.

As I am not a developer, I don't know exactly where is the line of code that you would need to change to insert the HTML "disabled" attribute ... well, I don't know exactly where it is unless I spent half-an-hour searching for it! You can do that yourself, if you like, or, you could wait until some generous person with half-an-hour's free time on their hands does this for you and provides you with the answer free-of-charge.

This topic is entitled, "Can I prevent users changing their 'real name'?". In the context of some built-in, configurable feature/option within the standard K 3.0 product, the short answer is, no, you cannot. In the context of Kunena being an open source project, where you have access to the source code and you can make any changes you like to the PHP source, of course the answer is, yes, you can make whatever change you like. The question now seems to be "How do I make a custom change to Kunena?" That's a different subject and it does not apply in this topic. We have other categories for those kinds of questions:

• Custom work - offering to pay
• Custom work - not offering to pay

Ultimately "nothing is impossible but everything has a cost"; people should be careful, though, that when they make changes to suit themselves, not everyone else will appreciate those changes.

@sozzled,

I can understand your 'desire' to remain anonymous is you want to, but the forum I am setting up is not an open community.
The desire of the use of real names on 'my' forum is fairly high.
I have the opinion of the administrator decides what is editable, not the registered member.
You also claim (at least, if I read it correctly) all other forums also have the ability for user to edit their 'real name': phpBB does not have this...
The reason of why I chose Kunena is simple: it first perfectly into Joomla, without any 3rd-party plugins that can ruin your members-database.

Just an explanation on the club the website is for:
Reddingsbrigade Zuid-Oost Drenthe is a 'reascue-brigage' (like a sports-club) with volunteers only. All of our members are known by their real name en do not have any weird or funny nick-names.
The trainers/instructors and board-members are the only ones able to access the forum, they are known by their real name. I want to keep it this way.
This is why I want to be able to disabling the 'real-name edit'.

Thanks for your time any way.

Assuming that your users are mature, responsible people - you only have a handful of users anyway - and that you say you have triple-checked name spellings, etc., in all probability what is the likelihood that someone - any one of your users - will actually attempt to change their "real name"? Further, what is the resultant damage if they did change their real name? Let's be serious about this, OK? If the probability is close to 100% that one (of 30) users will actually try to to change their real name you probably should ask yourself the questions "Why would they want to do that? What did I do wrong, in the first place, to make them want to change their real name?"

I mean, these are the real questions. These are serious questions.

Yes, you can prevent people doing this. You can change the source code to apply changes that stop people changing various parts of their forum user profile; any part of parts of it that you like. No-one here is suggesting that you cannot make those changes. There are two points that I'm trying to make. Firstly, these changes you want are changes you have to make yourself, with all the risks associated with them being yours, and you will be completely responsible in the future for the consequences.

I expect there will be two consequences:

1) Someone will ask the question on your forum about how they can change their name; and
2) Every time there is a new release of Kunena, you will have to hack the source code to put back the changes that you are intending to make.

The second point that I want to make is that you asked the question: "Can I prevent users changing their real names?" There are two answers that I have given before:

1) No, you cannot do this simply by setting some "configuration option" because there is no configuration setting to do this. That's the correct answer in the setting of the K 3.0 General Questions category and that's as far as we can go in giving you a solution in this topic; we can happily discuss the for-and-against case but this does not change the answer.
2) Yes, you can do this if you make a custom change to the source code. We do not use the K 3.0 General Questions category to discuss the details of custom changes. Custom changes are not general questions. We have separate categories for people who want to make custom changes.

People may request changes like yours as a new feature in a future version of Kunena. We have a separate category for new feature requests: Feature Requests . The developers look at contributions in the Feature Requests category and they may feel inclined (if there is some show of support for these things) to include such changes in new versions of Kunena ... or they may not. I am not a developer, that's not my concern.

Have you done as I suggested and looked at where this change would need to be made yourself? I would start by looking for any file in the Kunena folders that has the a filename like profile.php and see if you can find something like:

within that file and change the code to

And that's all you need to do!

Thank you...
The ages of the member vary from about 14 years up to 50+ (yes, we have pretty young teachers, but they are skilled and under proper/certified guidance!)
As you might imagine, the youngsters really might changes their real name to something completely understandable (or impossible to pronounce )
(facebook and twitter will give you many examples)

Thanks for you time and answer.
Will have a look for something like 'profile.php'

Was a bit more difficult than simply editing a HTML file.

steps taken:
1. search for 'edit_user.php' (\template\blue_eagle\html\user\edit_user.php)
2 Go to line 35, and add <? php echo !$this->namechange ? 'disabled="disabled" ' : '' ? > just before 'size="40" />' in that line
3. safe file and upload to proper folder with FTP.

Job done...
(I took the example from line 27, editing username and changed "!$this->usernamechange" into "!$this->namechange")

_{(I still beleive the editing of certain profile parts should be possible to disabled)}