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Hi Folks,

Need some advice here. Adding CF and CC to a site soon. Hopefully start today.

My question is about the Name field. Should it be broken up into Firstname and Lastname fields or just left as combined Name field?

As of now, we have not allowed anyone to register on the site. Just backend admin users right now.

The goal is to have a single register/log in for joomla, CF/CC forms/dbs, and later a social site app such as Jomsocial with integrated forum, etc.. Would like to keep frequent upgrades of Joomla and other apps easy too.

Users will be able to search CF/CC forms/dbs from the FE.

Would like to use the current default Joomla registration forms, emails and workflow as much as possible to keep implemenation as easy as possible.

We also have this same issue/questions with another site, but there we have registered users already.

Thanks in advance for your help and opinions.

Hi bkmchronoengine,

Your choice. The Joomla jos_users table only takes a single 'name' field. But you can collect and save separate first & last name fields and join the two together for registration.

Bob

10-4.

For search functionality, having them split up makes alot of sense...

Thanks.

Hi bkmchronoengine,

Also if you want to personalise things and say 'Dear John'.

I've done this by putting 'first_name' and 'last_name' fields in my form + a hidden 'name' field, then using the Joomla Registration Plugin 'Extra Code Before' box to put the combined name into the 'name' field for registration. That seems to work well. I think there is an example here somewhere.

Bob

Hi,

10-4 on the hidden field suggestion. Sounds slick and bulletproof.

Regarding registration, and the various plugins in CF, looking for some guidance on work flow.

Ideally would want:

1) User registers and logs in.
2) Makes data entry form accessable to that loged in user, pre-populating the Name and Username fields from the joomla registration database. User can not change these field values in the form.
3) User submits data and creates a record.
4) Several forks here, but one of the options is to create another record, using pre-populated Name and Username fields.
5) Repeat.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Hi bkmchronoengine,

Once the user is registered you can use the Joomla User object to get their name, username, etc. Search here on getUser for many examples. You an also use their id to pull up data from other tables. You can display the name in plain HTML

 <div>Dear <?php echo $user->name; ?>;</div>

so that it is not editable.

This doesn't have to be the same form as the registration form though so you can go where you like.

Bob