MyBB Community Forums

Wanting to automated the process. Is editing the username field under mybb_users a bad idea? Is there anywhere else the username needs to be changed?

yes, user name is used at the posts, thread author name, last poster name, ... and at private messages .. etc

Edit: see post #4

U can change them in the admin CP easily. Go to users & groups and find the username and edit profile

The UID is stored in other sections of the database, and not the username directly. The reasoning is so that the username can be changed without having to update fields in many tables. (When MyBB is, say, fetching the username for a private message, it will fetch the UID from the private messages table, then join the result with the username field that corresponds to the UID in the users table. This is done frequently in well coded software to keep duplicate data from being stored in the database. )

Then again, I've never tried doing it straight from phpmyadmin or via an SQL query, so I wouldn't be able to guarantee that it would not cause any issues in case the username is stored elsewhere. You'd probably be better off just doing it from the ACP just to be on the safe side.

Issue is that we offer a service to automatically change your name (costs virtual points) - it's automated. I just wanted to make sure username by default isn't saved anywhere else.

mybb_posts -> username
mybb_forums->lastposter
mybb_spamlog->username (though I doubt this one matters.)
mybb_threads->username, lastposter

Just change it in the ACP.