Is there a way to force a letter as the first character in the username?

[thelostswede]

Is there a way to force the first character in a new users username to be a letter rather than say a special character? Numbers should be ok to have first I guess, but having people registering usernames like .... isn't so cool for example.
I've searched the forum, but I didn't come up with an answer to the question.

Cheers

[MrPhil]

There have been requests before to control the alphabet used in Screen Names (i.e. restrict it to ASCII). This would be a further restriction. I may have some code at home to do this, but I can't look until tonight.

[MrPhil]

See http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=497825.msg3493351#msg3493351 for restricting the character set to a subset of ASCII. Add an additional check to restrict the first character to letters:

Code Select Expand

if (preg_match('~[^A-Z0-9 _-]~i', $checkName)) {
becomes

Code Select Expand

if (preg_match('~[^A-Z0-9 _-]~i', $checkName) || preg_match('~[^A-Z]~i', $checkName[0])) {

The first preg_match should flag an error if any character not A-Z, a-z, 0-9, (space), _ or - is found in the name, and the second specifically checks the first character of the name for anything other than A-Z or a-z. Again, I haven't actually tried this, so let us know if it works for you. If it doesn't allow lowercase letters, change A-Z to A-Za-z and ~i' to ~' and see if that works.

If you don't care about any character but the first, you could remove the first preg_match( ) and the ||.

[thelostswede]

Thanks a million for that, it worked a treat

[MrPhil]

Glad to hear that!