aMember and Simple Machines Forum (SMF) integration

My partner and I purchased aMember several months ago in order to update a very old installation of aMember Pro (version 3) and SMF.

I've already had to contact the support staff a while back regarding issues with the SMF 'display' name not automatically populating with the 'Username". The support staff had to run a purpose built script to swap things around. I really didn't understand things back then, plus our forum and products were pretty dead so we weren't experiencing things 'live'. However, we've just launched our latest product and issues have arisen regarding the same problem. This resulted in me having to manually go through 400 usernames yesterday and correct around 30% of them which were showing their real names. This took me an entire day to complete!

I've since had another new client signup and his username isn't appearing as the "Latest Member" in the Forum Stats at the bottom of the Home page. Prior to the upgrade, the way to correct this was to use the Rebuild database function in the old version 3. This always fixed the issue but I had to do it every time a new member signed up. I'm extremely reluctant to rebuild the SMF Db now as I believe it will swap every single username with their real name. People create usernames for anonymity purposes. Why on earth would they want to display their real name? Further, SMF users do not have access to the display 'Name' field in order to change it. This can only be done by Admin!

So let me explain things further. Login to SMF as Admin, proceed to Profile=>Modify Profile=>Account Settings=> and you'll see something like the following:

Username anonymity
(change)

Name James Anonymous
This is the displayed name that people will see.

I presume that the above "names" are pulled directly from aMember Pro's Db and populated by the SMF integration plugin.

What I'm trying to achieve is to ensure that the above forum 'Name' field is always/automatically populated with the actual Username when a new client signs up.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction?

Further research here -http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Main_Page reveals that "After registering at a forum, the display name is usually set to be the same as the username, but you can change this in the sectionProfile > Account Settings." After digging around in the Admin "General Permissions", I found a section "Personalize their Profile" which has the option 'Edit their account settings'.

So I enabled this and now any member has the ability to change/set their 'Display Name'. This may have been the "blockage" which prevented SMF plugin from setting the Display Name....but I'm not sure.

Anyhow, I still need to know what will happen once I hit the Rebuild Smf Database button.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your response.

A few things to note:

A temporary fix was to run a query via phpMyAdmin - UPDATE `smf_members` SET `real_name` = `member_name`.

My partner and I had already discovered the necessary code to change in those two arrays but were about to change it differently as per the following:

PHP:

array(Am_Protect_Table::FIELD_NAME, 'real_name'),

to

PHP:

array(Am_Protect_Table::FIELD_NAME, 'member_name'),

I'm confused about your "from" line of code as it is different to the actual code which includes 'member_name' ? Have you made a typo here?

Also, the amember "Rebuild Users Database" section has the following three function selections to "rebuild"

1.Rebuild Core Database - 2.Rebuild Invoice Database - 3.Rebuild Smf Database

Should I be executing the 1st option or the 3rd one.......or both?

Cheers

I was still editing my response when the allowed 30 minutes expired :-( Anyhow, what I was trying to point out in your response was that your suggested code changes would mean that the 'FIELD_LOGIN' code would appear twice ( for both Username and display Name). Wouldn't this create a conflict?

Thanks. Changes made and uploaded. Used Rebuild SMF database function with no issues....so I think we're all happy now.

Just a couple more questions if you don't mind:

1. We're currently running SMF v2.0.5 and note that the current version is now up to 2.0.10. Are you guys checking periodically to see if your plugin script works with later versions?
2. The aMember Pro v4.0 documentation refers to the installation folder name as being 'amember'. Our original installation folder for v3.0 was named 'member'. When you guys upgraded the software for us to v4.0, you kept the folder name as 'member'. Just wondering why this was done (preserve existing links) ? Will we encounter any issues down the track as far as automated updates go, due to the old folder name?