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Hi—I plan to change from “member” to something else. Do I then go and find all login links and change them, too?

I tried this once and then couldn’t make the login work, so I don’t know if I missed a piece of this process.

Thanks!

- Mike Hickcox

Hi Mike,

Once you’ve changed your trigger word, you’ll need to update all occurrences of the word “member” to your new word. The Search and Replace tool can speed this process up.

Once you’ve changed the trigger word, and updated the paths accordingly, everything should be working correctly.

Let me know your progress.

Thanks!

Kyle—I’ve gone there, gotten ready to replace, then backed off in caution. If I replace “Member” with my new word in all templates, could that break anything else in the system, or can I make that replacement confident that life will still be okay in my site?

- Mike

When in question, backup everything just in case!

Hey Mike,

In most cases, the links to member templates should be written like

{path='member/profile'}

or have some other unique syntax, so that when you search and replace, if you search for

{path='member/profile'}

and replace with

{path='NEW_TRIGGER/profile'}

it’ll only replace the word member in those instances, instead of every word of member on the site. That way you can be assured only that path is being updated.

As Alex mentions, if you’re worried about breaking something to the point of not being able to easily fix it, a DB backup before hand wouldn’t hurt.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks!

I need help in something.
- I’ve backed up the database.
- I’ve replaced the word in all templates
- I’ve changed the word in the member preferences.

And yet, when I go to the home page and click login - although it has been changed in the template, I’ll still see this:

http://www.soundtheology.org/index.php/member/login

Where do I need to still change it?

- Thanks, Mike

Call off the Mayday.

I went to those pages and re-saved them, and now it seems to have worked.

Thank you very much for help with this!

- Mike

Great! Glad to see you’ve got everything working again. Anything else we can do for you?

Kyle and Kevin -

Thank you for the help on this part of it. The system seems to be working with the new name instead of “member.”

But I’m still seeing lots of people going in directly to member/edit_profile and signing up - spammers attempting to leave URLs.

I know I’ve changed the name in all the templates. Do I need to delete the edit_profile template - and if I do, will the system still work?

Thanks, Mike

This may have done it - I’ve employed the .htaccess file suggested by Chris earlier. The file contains:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} edit_profile [NC]
RewriteRule .* /index.php [L]

It appears to me that my system still works, and that my spammers may have a tougher time now.

We’ll see ...

Thanks, Mike

Still no good. They’re still coming in like foxes through the ripped fence to the hen house. Several more have come in this morning. They get to the edit_profile page. I don’t know how they do it.

I’ve changed the trigger word to something else. I’ve added an .htaccess file which boots me over to the homepage when I try to bypass. And yet they come in like the fence doesn’t exist.

Can I just change the name of edit_profile in case I need it at a later date, but avoid people getting there now?

- Mike

Hey Mike,

I’m confused. You successfully changed the member profile trigger word to something other than member, but the page at http://example.com/index.php/member/edit_profile can still be accessed? Or are they doing it at the URL with the new trigger word?

So the problem then seems to be that existing spammers, those with an account already in your system, are editing their accounts to add URLs to their bios? Be on the lookout for an email from me. I’d like to have a first-hand look at this while discussing the problem with you.

Just posting a note here to let onlookers know that we’re working with Mike privately on this for the time being. I’ll post an update back here once we have something to share!