Can I please get help changing my forum display name from my email address?

[Parker]

Like this poster, I signed up for the forum using my email address as my username. I didn’t realize that it would show as my display name.

I understand that the username cannot be changed and the account not deleted, but I need help changing my display name to hide my email address (although I see in the above linked post that clicking on the display name still takes me to the profile with the email address as the display name). 🙁

Thanks in advance! I’d really like not to get spammed (but that may be unavoidable now).

[Andrew Nevins]

Looks like you’ve resolved this, could you post how you did it just in case someone has the same query in future? Thanks.

[Parker]

Well, it sort of appears that I resolved it, but what I am now seeing is that there are two profiles created. And these are edited separately. It would be great if somehow they were collapsed (this is the kind of stuff that bugs me about Microsoft services/forums). Two profiles:

• http://profiles.wordpress.org/ [ username ]
• http://wordpress.org/support/profile/ [ username ]

On the first profile, my email address doesn’t show anymore. That’s the one you get to by clicking my avatar on these posts. I changed my display name in the second profile, and that appears to be what my display name shows as on these posts now. I just had to fill in my first and last names, save, then edit again and choose one of the “Display name as” options.

But on that second profile, my email address is displayed as my username. I’m not sure how normal users would click to the latter profile, but it is definitely publicly available just by subbing a username. All I want is for my display name on the “support profile” to be anything other than my email address.

Then there’s the issue that my username’s “slug” still has all the characters from my email address. Sigh. At least it only shows in the one place rather than on every post, but I’m still not happy about it.

[WPyogi]

Unfortunately, we literally cannot change that (yes, it’s an annoying limitation) – you can either not worry about it :), or just create a new user account and abandon this one.

[Parker]

Yes, I understand those limitations. But even if I abandon it, the problem remains that my email address is floating out there. I’ll just get over it and be thankful for good spam filtering. 🙂

What would help future registrants: The profile registration signup form should make this explicitly clear:

The username you choose will be displayed for the world to see forever!

It is not like LinkedIn, for instance, where your login username is an email but your profile slug is a different string.