If you manage a multi-authors site, it is a good practice to standardized the author profile as well as the display name for each author. Default WordPress installation allows users to choose their display name from a dropdown in the profile page – username, first name, last name, first and last name, last name and first name.
However, if you want to force every users on your site to display their first and last name, you can simply install and activate this little plugin called Force First and Last Name as Display Name which is available for free from WordPress plugin repo.
Here’s default WordPress profile page with drop down to choose display your display name:
Installing this plugin will completely remove the dropdown field to choose your display name.
After activating this plugin, all new registered users will have their first and last name being displayed on the site. However, there’s additional settings from the plugin settings page which will check all existing users and force their first and last name to be displayed. To do this, go to Settings > Force First Last and click the Update Existing Users button.
The checking shouldn’t take more than few seconds. However, for thousand of users, it might take longer for the plugin to check and force the new display name.
This little plugin shows how flexible and extensible WordPress is, even a small thing like this can be changed with interrupting the entire system. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comment section below.
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