Force Joomla to use email as username sitewide

Question

We have this joomla installation with a webshop and some other php functions that read into the joomla database.

Upon starting the website, we were OK with the fact, that Joomla needed a separate username and it does not automatically use the email address as that.

As of now, the system got a little bit complicated and we are thinking about dropping the username thing, cause the email address is alot more valuable to us and our custom functions.

Is there any way, where we can safely convert all the usernames into the users actual email address, and from now on let users only register with their email & password combo?

Basically just drop the username from the joomla credential system, and use the email instead...?

Answer 1

I'm not sure what "custom functions" you have and how they relate, but you should really be using the User ID as your primary identity token. However, we did this same thing on a fairly large site a few years back. There were two major steps:

1. Install and setup Email as Username
2. Create a language override for the "username" label on login forms to change it to "email".

I'm sure there were other customizations we had to do, but that was the biggest part of it. Removing the username completely from Joomla! would be a bigger headache than it's worth as many components rely on it (in a secondary form). What the plugin does is automatically create a username with like FirstLast and allows you to login via email or username.

On a side note, keep in mind that this is a security risk as you are giving away half of the username/password security credentials to anyone who has a user's email address.