Restrict username chars as option in ACP

[Guest Exiled]

I'll be upgrading my test board from 2.0.4 to 2.1.3 tomorrow, so I apologize in advance if I missed this in one of the changelogs.

I'm sure you are already aware of Den Watts simple character checking mod, but there's nothing in that thread to indicate that it has been incorporated. If not, it's probably because you have so much else to work on, and probably don't see it as a something your customers desire.

Some customers might not even *like* it. I daresay they'll want it soon, though.

I've had members with Greek letters in their names. Even if you manually review/authorize each new account, would you see the difference between PeterPiper and ΡeterΡiper? (Cut and paste this paragraph into a word processor, and do a search for "P". There is no capital P in the second name. Change to an old font, and you'll see: the Ρ's are Greek capital rhos; I could have used the Cyrillic "err" too. ) This isn't even necessarily the best example, just one that happens to work well in my current screen font.

The 2.0.4 login allows both names simultaneously, because -to a computer- they are quite distinct. Yet an admin would only see the one name or the other if they did a search (depending on whether they cut'n'paste or typed the name -- rho doesn't appear in the Roman alphabetic sequence, and would map to "R", not "P", if it did). This could result in all sorts of hijinks and confusion. Most computers aren't even configured to easily type a capital Rho or Err into a search or other field, and checking each character individually is a pain.

Though many customers *like* clever character-based names (I do), character restrictions should at least be incorporated an ACP checkbox or regexp option window. Extended character sets have serious potential for masquerading and other abuse, and can make life tough for casual admins. In the real world, all the major browsers had to ignore an adopted standard and withdraw support for extended characters in URLs, because of the greatly increased risk of undetected phishing: PayPal != ΡayΡal.

Again, I apologize if I missed it in the changelogs. There are a lot of them since the last Admin did an update!