Blocking "User Creation" with special characters and spaces in "Username"?

[fmk]

Hi Guys,

A newbie + no programmer.

I need help with blocking "User Creation" with special characters and spaces in Usernames. I have edited text instructions in lang/english.php accordingly but want such attempts to be prohibited.

http://igallery.khanz.net

Thanks in advance.

[Αndré]

What shall happen if you detect unwanted characters? Do you want to automatically replace them? Do you want to display an error message? Which characters to you want to allow?

[fmk]

Allowed characters - Users must register with either "firstname.lastname" or "firstname" or "lastname. I want a-z allowed and No spaces, and special characters like hyphen, underscores, etc. My users are able to register with a space in the user name.

Q-What shall happen if unwanted characters are detected?
A-Page should return an error asking user for correction. Form data should not be lost though.

Q-Do you want to automatically replace them?
A-Its a nice idea, but users may get confused, so No.

[Αndré]

Open register.php, find

Code Select Expand

    if (utf_strlen($user_name) < 2) {
        $error .= '<li style="list-style-image:url(images/icons/stop.png)">' . $lang_register_php['username_warning2'] . '</li>';
    }
and replace with

Code Select Expand

    if (utf_strlen($user_name) < 2) {
        $error .= '<li style="list-style-image:url(images/icons/stop.png)">' . $lang_register_php['username_warning2'] . '</li>';
    } elseif (preg_match('/[^A-Za-z]/', $user_name)) {
        $error .= '<li style="list-style-image:url(images/icons/stop.png)">' . 'Username must only contain a-z' . '</li>';
    }

[fmk]

Works great. Thanks a lot Andre.