Wordpress does not like apostrophes, apparently

August 19, 2008 12:25 PM

I'm trying to add a username in Wordpress that has an apostrophe in it (like Jerry O'Connell). It's telling me this is not allowed. Can I work around this?

I can't smoosh it together like Jerry OConnell because the way the blog is set up, the username is the author's real name. Our posts are headed like:

Headline (Author Name)

Is there a plug-in or anything I can do to make this happen?

We're running 2.0.11, but I tried to do it on my personal blog running 2.5 and it didn't work either.

posted by kerning to computers & internet (9 comments total)

In a different application with a similar issue, I was able to use the accent grave (to the left of the 1 key) as a substitute for the apostrophe. Maybe worth a try here?
posted by Sweetie Darling at 12:36 PM on August 19, 2008

I don't really know. It could be some utterly lame SQL-injection protection, in which case "O145;Connell" might work for you.

In any case send them a nastygram bug report.
posted by cmiller at 12:41 PM on August 19, 2008

Speaking of utterly lame injection protections.

That should be Oh, ampersand, pound, 1 4 5, semicolon Cee oh en en...
posted by cmiller at 12:42 PM on August 19, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

cmiller: ha! I tried that, actually, but no dice. the Oh ampersand pound :) I've been searching the wordpress forums and someone said to do the ampersand pound 8217 semicolon and still nothing. Thanks though :)
posted by kerning at 12:51 PM on August 19, 2008

Why are you displaying the username? Does that mean someone posts publicly as "admin" for example? I think WordPress has a "Nickname" field for every user for specifically this reason. In your setup, it sounds like "Username" = "Nickname" but I'm pretty sure there's more flexibility in what you can put in as the "Nickname" field (including spaces).

I just tested an apostrophe in the nickname of my WordPress user and it went through fine. I was also able to put an apostrophe in the "Last Name" field, which WordPress allows you to mix and match via the "Display Name" setting to be "Firstname Lastname," "Lastname Firstname," etc.

Though you say your username can be "Jerry OConnell" -- and I didn't know you could have a space in a username, either!
posted by pzarquon at 12:54 PM on August 19, 2008

Yeah. Nicknames are definitely the answer. There's really no need to allow random special characters in usernames, so I'm not sure the recommended "nastygram" or "bug report" are really a worthwhile endeavor.
posted by toomuchpete at 1:07 PM on August 19, 2008

Plus using the funny characters might make logging in difficult.
posted by wangarific at 1:22 PM on August 19, 2008

Yes I would also recommend using the "nickname" field and keeping usernames to be alphanumeric.
posted by saxmatt at 2:36 PM on August 19, 2008

Yeah, just have your them display the nickname instead of the username.
posted by apetpsychic at 11:47 PM on August 19, 2008