As far as i know username is only / mostly used in the urls, not when displaying content to the user.

Do you also want to replace it in the urls? Because that will cause massive problems in the internals of core and every plugin.

Thank you Jerome,

Yes, you are right. So far I found the username only in 2 cases: The Wire and a theme that I use, which I can handle.

However, exposing the username (e.g. in the URL) might be not the best security approach. 

In order not to cause massive problems in the internals of core and every plugin we thought about the following approach:

1. Add to  elggss_users_entity table a column "real_username" which includes the username. This column will be used during registration and login.
2. The username column will include a unique string (maybe some variation of the user GUID). It will be populated during registration.

In this way there is no need to change the plugins and the URL will include only the unique string, not the username. The only change should be done to the registration/login proccess.

What is your opinion?

Thank you

Did you try this plugin?

https://elgg.org/plugins/1148004

Thank you rjcalifornia. I checked Advanced_Statistics out but it does not have it.

Add Photo and Video by links_thewire

https://elgg.org/plugins/2061296

seems being the same core code as the previous advanced wire links...

Upon activation, noticing this shares the same conflicting create.php file that creates conflict with thewire edit...

Where does this combined code go:

This is how I fixed the issue:

I created a the file combining the source code of both the create.php file:

$object = $vars["item"]->getObjectEntity();
$excerpt = strip_tags($object->description);

$attachments = "";
$reshare = $object->getEntitiesFromRelationship(array("relationship" => "reshare", "limit" => 1));
if (!empty($reshare)) {
    $attachments = elgg_view("thewire_tools/reshare_source", array("entity" => $reshare[0]));
}

if($attachments==""){
$excerpt = elgg_preview($excerpt);
$excerpt = thewire_filter($excerpt);
}else{
$excerpt = thewire_tools_filter($excerpt);
}

$subject = $vars["item"]->getSubjectEntity();
$subject_link = elgg_view("output/url", array(
    "href" => $subject->getURL(),
    "text" => $subject->name,
    "class" => "elgg-river-subject",
    "is_trusted" => true,
));

$object_link = elgg_view("output/url", array(
    "href" => "thewire/owner/$subject->username",
    "text" => elgg_echo("thewire:wire"),
    "class" => "elgg-river-object",
    "is_trusted" => true,
));

$summary = elgg_echo("river:create:object:thewire", array($subject_link, $object_link));

echo elgg_view("river/elements/layout", array(
    "item" => $vars["item"],
    "message" => $excerpt,
    "summary" => $summary,
    "attachments" => $attachments
));

Is it a replacement for one or both of the create.php files???

very confused by the "directions" included with that combined code...

There is a conflict between TheWire Links Preview Advanced and TheWire Tools plugin.

 Both the plugin has a common file: mod/< plugin_name >\views\default\river\object\< plugin_name >\create.php

Now as I place the plugin one after the other, the create file of the later plugin from the list is being used to generate the preview and the above plugins is ignored.

This is how I fixed the issue:

I created a the file combining the source code of both the create.php file