There are three different names for Members:
- Username (Login) – Being used for forum authorization (login, sign-in) action
- Display Name – The Display Name is what shows up next to a user’s posts, as well as on their Profile page.
- Nicename – Unique name which is used in this forum to generate user Profile URL. In other words this is the user URL /path/. For example thatchfinder.com/community/profile/thatcher99/.
After a regular user registration process, Username, Display Name and Nicename are set the same. For example If you register a user with “Thatcher99” Username your user names look like this:
- Username – Thatcher99
- Display Name – Thatcher99
- Nicename – thatcher99
And profile URL will be:
thatchfinder.com/community/profile/thatcher99/
This is insecure, because profile URLs are public and hackers can see the thatcher99 part. Using this part (Nicename) they can detect the Username and try to login with different passwords. In this way they can also find Administrator username and your website will be under the risk.
In order to fix this security issue, this forum has “Display Name” and “Nicename” fields in Forum > My Profile > Account font-end page. Using this options you should change the Display Name and Nicename to something like this:
- Username – Thatcher99
- Display Name – Roof Thatcher
- Nicename – thatcherman (this will become @thatcherman for tagging purposes)
This is a secure way to configure User Names.
