Hi,
I currently have my site configured so that a customer who creates an account, selects a user name. An alternative is to make the user account the same as the email account.
If I should change the setting to email now, will the accounts set up with a different user name be changed? Which is the best method, using the email address or allow creation of a separate user name.
I ask this because I had a customer forgot their user name and was using their email address. They called and I told them that their user name is their name!
Just wondering what is best practice.
Thanks,
Bob
Hello Bob,
I have kicked that question around several times and prefer to have email address = username, customers have enough problems remembering two details, right?
Be very careful about making this switch in the admin as I got burnt by switching back & forth when initially setting up CS about 1-1/2 years ago, don’t remember the details, however, I did loose some customer login details.
I would definitely test on a test site unless you can get a crystal clear answer on the effects of switching the username method!
yes, the switch is problematic if anyone has registered when the site is configured in the email method. Their username is then hidden and it’s like cust-123.
Note that when using the email address customers will become confused anyway. On the profile page there is an Email field at the top in place of Username and then an E-mail field below in the Customer Info.
The problem is that both fields use a form input text name of ‘user_data[emai]’ so changing the top one will have no affect and changing the bottom one will affect both.
I’ve submitted a bug on this issue. Personally, I think you should have customers always choose a username so the admin can easily switch between the two login types.
But like Struck, I believe customers find it easier to remember the email address they used rather than a username…
Thanks for your input.
Except for confusing current customers (not too many anyway), I can modify Username to Username or an email address.
I checked and the username field can take an email address. The customer could decide what they want to use.
They could enter a different email address for username than the one they want the order confirmation to be sent to.
Then, if current customers decide they want to user an email address, I assume I can go into the admin and change it for them.
Most customers do not create accounts, so there are not many to change if they want it changed.
Bob
Seems like a more elegant solution would have been to simply leave it as a Username but ,if configured to do so, have the login prompt for Email Address rather than Username. They could be initialized (first input) to the same value, but then separately editable after that. Right now, it’s just kind of a mess.
[QUOTE]Note that when using the email address customers will become confused anyway. On the profile page there is an Email field at the top in place of Username and then an E-mail field below in the Customer Info.[/QUOTE]
Actually, I have no idea where you are seeing multiple email address fields displayed? It would be foolish to list multiple email address fields! 
I have spent a considerable amount of time configuring all of the User Profile Fields in our site so that only the ones needed are displayed & only in the sections where they make absolute business logical sense.
The most frustrating of all the fields is the “Company” field & the overall way it is utilized & displayed within the address fields in CS-Cart, it is treated as if it is a secondary, non-predominant field…
And considering that in my business the majority of our customer base is B2B, this has been a constant issue.
I think he saw it in my store and it was part of a custom addon… a new user type. My other users cannot see the email address field more than once and this reminds me I need to check to see if I can configure the profile fields for the new user type. 
That will solve the issue. (Edit: nope, it’s a bug - I can’t hide those fields.)
I have used an email address login for customers for years and years. When I had no other option but to require a username, people were always forgetting it. Logging in with an email address is pretty standard… amazon, facebook, etc.
Thanks for the clarification Ogia (that Tbirnseth guy has been remembering some of the strangest things lately…)! 
I agree with you on the logic behind the Username = email address
I monitor our CS-Cart log files all day long and specifically pay attention to “Failed Logins”, I find it quite amazing how often even some of our most frequent customers enter their email address correctly & then try two or three times before entering their correct Password, so point is people have more than enough diifficulty in simply remembering their password & by using email address as username they at least have a pretty good idea of what email address they would have registered with!
The standard field in the Contact section is labeled ‘E-mail’. It uses a form name of user_data[email].
When you change from using usernames to email address you will get the top field labeled ‘Email’ (note no dash) and it will also be named user_data[email].
So if you did nothing but change from using usernames to email address for login, you will have 2 user_data[email] fields and the 2nd one will be the one that actually is POSTed to the profiles controller.
It makes no sense to duplicate the form name. It also makes no sense to distinguish between username and email address for login. Let them enter whatever they want. You would do a “WHERE email=$login_name OR username=$login_name AND password=md5($password)” That way they can use a username or an email as long as they know the password for the account.
Ok, I now see that you are referring to what would be experienced after switching between the two Username methods (Email Address vs. Seperate Username).
I looked everywhere to find multiple instances of email address fields being displayed and since I use Email address as user name I do not experience this, and with somewhere around 4,000 registered users I am not about to change the username login method again, already did that once…
As I said, I think the correct solution is to let a customer use whatever they want for login. They can use a username or email address. The code change is quite simple and then the whole Email versus Username issue could simply go away. Just change the Email or Username prompt at login to “Login” then lookup the password and match it to the email OR username.
[QUOTE]As I said, I think the correct solution is to let a customer use whatever they want for login.[/QUOTE]
I would never allow customers on our site to have that decision, simply because there is no doubt in mind that it would create far more failed login attempts, call it my way of looking out for “them”, in actuality I am controlling my work schedule by reducing customer induced problems & pushing orders through with the least amount of effort. Just my way of viewing these types of situations!
Not sure how supporting 2 options (invisble to the user at login) causes problems, but doesn’t matter. It’s not a decision “between”, it’s a “gee, don’t remember what I did… Username failed, so think I’ll try my email address… Viola, I’m in.”.
[QUOTE]Not sure how supporting 2 options (invisble to the user at login) causes problems, but doesn’t matter. It’s not a decision “between”, it’s a “gee, don’t remember what I did… Username failed, so think I’ll try my email address… Viola, I’m in.”.[/QUOTE]
Well, because now a “3rd variable” is being tossed into mix.
- Did I originally enter my Email address or did I enter some random Username for my login, huhm, I wonder which I would have entered 18 months ago?
- If I did enter a random Username, what could it have been?
- What Password did I use, having trouble remembering that as well?
Customers final thought: SCREW THIS, I am just going to create a brand new account as I can do this quicker & simpler than figuring out this Usename/Password nightmare!
And then, I end up with 8,000 user registrations of which 4,000 are nothing but duplicated records which create even more work for me to clean up the mess! :shock:
This triggers an incredibly intelligent thought!
T, you should consider creating an addon which will allow us to search for duplicate customer accounts which also then allows the ability to Merge these duplicated accounts into one single record!
Several years ago I had this ability on a different shopping cart platform and it was a very useful feature in keeping your database trim & tidy. 
@Struck - I guess I’m not making myself clear so I’ll give it up as it relates to the login type.
No way on merging customers, I created a customer merge utility for my back-end system and every client wants something different. I.e. what fields are overwritten, which are concatenated, which phone becomes the primary phone? Which customre not comes first? Etc., etc. etc… This is a maintenance nightmare and I would have been better off to say "sorry, customers are what come in on orders. If they dup (my customers are considered unique by the lower case value of their full name with the numbers from their primary phone number appended - that becomes the key) because customers are submitting data that doens’t match (name and phone) then, it’s your problem…
Of course I haven’t said that, but I now make changes to the merge_customers utility very, very slowly… And would not even consider opening up that can of worms again…
But thanks for the vote of confidence!