While searching the forum I found a post with a similar problem:

https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/hiding-user-e-mails/

Per that message thread, I confirmed that I do not have this permission checked: “Can view email and IP address of members”

Let’s get one thing out of the way at the top. The topic you point to is not the same issue. That was discussing the showing of a users email address on their forum profile. You are discussing the forum ‘display_name’.

I have run a display_name change here and all appears to work as expected so there are some questions.

The first would be why and how was the display_name set to the users email address in the first place? The only scenario I can think of is that you are using some sort of membership plugin perhaps? Or some sort of plugin that utilises a users email address as their WordPress user/login name. If their WordPress ‘display name’ is then set to the user/login name it will be inherited by Simple:Press. It would be useful to know how this came about as it effects the rest of the process.

This also ties in to the fact that a users email address is never actively promoted to be their display name in either WordPress of Simple:Press – and remember that Simple:Press maintains it’s own display name – which is the one shown publicly.

So – moving onto the point of this topic. The only way that a change to first_name + last_name should result in showing something else is if the user record in WordPress does not have that information in the first place. If that is found to be the case the process then sets the SP display name to the WP display name. If that is found to be empty, and as a last resort, it sets it to the users login name. So is it possible that this is the case with your users data?

Great questions and info – first let me mention that the issue is resolved, thru a custom function just written for me by Memberpress support.

To close this out and let others know in the future how this occurred and was solved I’ll explain.

I am using Memberpress 1.2.8/1.2.9 to manage the Membership functionality. Upon registration Memberpress can set custom user roles, and I use those custom user roles to grant access to Simplepress forums via your permission system. No forums are available to non-members, but I do have it set to display the forum names to non-members/non-logged in users.

Memberpress uses the underlying WP users functionality, but has an option to require new members to use their email address as their login, which I have chosen. The registration process allows me to also require a first and last name (btw, they pay via credit card so that info isn’t optional anyway). By default you can manually go into a user in WP and change their display name to one of several choices including Firstname Lastname.  It’s the automatic setting of this that was not happening.

Memberpress wrote a short custom function that solves the problem.  When the user registers, it continues to use their email address as their login, but their Firstname LastName appears when creating a WP post, as well as when creating a Simplepress forum posting.

Thanks again for your detailed info and assistance.

Kelly

Curious. And thanks for the info – we appreciate it.