hashtag stream user's name

Hello CB, I put my sites/platforms live yesterday but still have a question I've been meaning to ask regarding a User's name display on a hashtag activity stream (in particular).

I use firstname and lastname.

The thing is on one of my platforms having the fullname (formatname) displayed on a hashtagged activity stream is a bit of a privacy concern. Otherwise profiles and Users activity is private.

Ideally I'd like to see "Firstname. Initial" Like John. P, but just firstname could work too. Could you point me in the right direction by any chance.

So I must make a new template for CB Activity. Do I change the activity.php or comments.php or both?

From having a look in activity.php if I wanted just first name I guess I would change [formatname] to [firstname]. Be great if you could confirm that. Any heads up on using the lastname initial would be much appreciated as seems like the best solution.

Kind regards

(my platform rule is to only use authorized hashtags, and Users are warned to keep the direct talk this initiates (outside of a group) non-personal, yet seeing someones full name when not professionally connected to that person, and maybe a picture could result in someone using that name to e.g. search for them on mainstream social media). Bit of a privacy concern. The community and social aspect happens inside groups.

You can't change this behavior without altering the core library files. Avatar, Canvas, and Formatname fields should not be private. They are used, extensively, outside of profiles. Especially Formatname field. You can select what the Formatname field displays as within CB > Configuration > General using "Name Format". You can also edit it within CB > Field Management and override how it displays using the Layout parameters. You may want to consider just not using the Recent Activity page if privacy is a big concern as that shows all activity.

Thanks Kyle, the fields you mentioned are indeed public.

Just with my usecase no option is ideal in the areas you mentioned. The best I can do is put in a disclaimer/warning and stick with Name Style: "first and lastname" and Name Format: "name only".

Formatname field only has options for: Profile, Profile Edit, Userlist and Registration Values. ---- I'm just looking to alter how "name" displays on the Activity Stream with [firstname]. [firstletter of lastname]. "Name" would then display as per current global settings on e.g. profile, groups etc.

It seems like a big ask, if anything comes to mind let me know.

By the way, Users only have access to their own activity streams. Invite (private) groups are heavily used. But I can't stop hashtags being used (previous question I asked). But I worked around this to make things better, just that a [firstname]. [firstletter of lastname] would be awesome (for my usecase) particularly for Activity Stream "name" display.

Kind regards

You can't customize how the name looks specifically on the stream. It uses the formatname field with userlist reason so the Userlist Value Layout is what you'd use to alter it, but you'll need to ensure the profile URL part of it is properly mimiced in your custom HTML.

There are no plans to add such a feature to change name display on steam only. The entire point is consistency between plugins so using the formatname field through APIs accomplishes this very well. So for example if you want firstname with last initial you could use a Code field and use PHP to format it like that then substitute it into the formatname field layout usage. This gives you total control of how it looks everywhere on your site.

Regarding disabling the @ usages have added a feature ticket to look into implementing as would be a good addition.

forge.joomlapolis.com/issues/6140

Thanks Kyle, I may reference this later for getting someone to do it for me but it seems slightly above my skillset at the moment. Reckon it could be easy enough for someone in the know though. Thanks for your time and feedback.