Cartpauj & iComNow

I just figured out a great way to implement a membership list directory that shows users' names and hooked it up to the Private Message center!

I installed amr-users, a highly customizable plugin that lets you display members (usernames) in a directory on a page (which I made private).

I put that page as a sub-page of the Message Center page so it displays as a link in a cookie at the top of the message center page.

At the top of the directory listing, I have "To send a message, enter or copy-and-paste the member’s username."

To Send a message is linked to the Send Message page.

It flows seamlessly that way.

Hi Rupe. To make pages private, I am using another plugin called User Access Manager (UAM). It's a simple but powerful plugin that manages the access to your posts, pages, categories and files.

A Directory (a list of all members) is now a feature of the current version (10.0.10).
You might argue if displaying all your members, even to eachother, is a safe thing to do...
I think at least other users login names should be kept secret at all times!

So I have "hacked" the plugin to at least not show login names, but display names instead by simply replacing user_name by display_name everywhere in search.php and in pm-class.php.

In our case we have also programatically forced display names to be the first and the last name, by adding the below code to our (child)theme's functions.php:

//Force display_name (name displayed on the site) as first + lastname
class myUsers {
static function init() {
// Change the user's display name after insertion
add_action( 'user_register', array( __CLASS__, 'change_display_name' ) );
}

static function change_display_name( $user_id ) {
$info = get_userdata( $user_id );

$args = array(
'ID' => $user_id,
'display_name' => $info->first_name . ' ' . $info->last_name
);

wp_update_user( $args ) ;
}
}

myUsers::init();

This combination also improves searching in Cartpauj-PM by making it possible to find by (typing a part of) the first name OR of the lastname ...!