login with a display name

[Terborch]

I want people to be able to login with a display name. I'm working with mysql, is there a way to let people to login with a display name? I want the display name so they can add a space to there user name (i.e. John Smith), They would still be logging in with one whole user name(i.e. J-Smith) but they would all be seeing each others display name.

[jesh]

You can do just about whatever you want. If you have a table which holds your user information (i.e. UserName, Password, UserID, etc), you could either add two more columns - FirstName, LastName - or you could add another table:

Users:UserID, UserName, Password, FirstName, LastName, etc.

or

Users:UserID, UserName, PasswordUserInfo:UserID, FirstName, LastName, etc.

Then, when the user logs into your site, you'll be able to retreive the user's UserID from your database. With that, you can look up their display name.

[justsomeguy]

Also, there is really no technical reason why a login name would not be allowed to contain spaces. It might be easier to type in without spaces, but you can also just allow spaces in their login name.