Pandiyan seeks to display users’ full names instead of usernames across Discourse, especially in profile pictures (showing the first letter of the full name), due to SSO login using Employee IDs as usernames. vinothkannans directs them to enable the “display name on posts” setting and notes that profile picture initials cannot be changed via settings — a custom plugin is required. Pandiyan confirms enabling the setting but observes that full names only appear inside topics, not on /latest or /top pages — vinothkannans clarifies this is expected behavior. Pandiyan asks about changing the profile picture letter to the full name’s first letter; vinothkannans shares a beginner’s plugin guide and later finds an existing plugin Discourse Avatar Name First Letter. pfaffman, the plugin’s author, confirms it may still work and offers to fix it if needed. Pandiyan confirms success after configuring the external system avatars URL setting. pfaffman updates the plugin’s README for clarity and suggests moving the topic to Product Support. Pandiyan praises the plugin’s utility and suggests adding this as a native site setting option. pfaffman explains such features are typically added only if widely requested or requested by high-paying sites, noting only two known users in five years.
I would like to know how can I display Name/FullName in every place of the discourse and also in Profile Pic place(Should be first letter of the fullname) instead of displaying Username.
Since we are using sso login, currently the username is EmployeeID and only that employee ID is showing everywhere, so I just want to display Fullname not Username after login by using username and password. Can someone tell how to achieve this.
It will be very helpful for me if someone could tell. Thank you !
Hi @vinothkannans ,
Thank you for your guidance.
I have already disabled that option from setting. Below is the picture that I am getting
Even though we have disabled that option, we are getting username only instead of fullname whenever any user is creating any topic. Please help me fix this.
To display name on posts you should enable “display name on posts” site setting.
You can’t change it in the settings. You would need a custom plugin to change the profile picture’s letter.
Thanks for updating about the profile picture!
I have already enabled that option in setting, but if we are in /latest page or /top page, for topics we are able to see only the username as like previously attached picture. After we got enter into any of the topic then we are able to see the fullName, Is this how that option will work ? Can you help me to understand this.
Yes, the default profile picture will be username’s first charecter.
Is there any possibility to display fullname’s first character in Profile Picture by using any settings or anyother ? It will be helpful if you suggest any plugins. Thank you.
Looks like there is a plugin for that. Since the plugin is old I’m not sure about its compatibility with the latest Discourse version.
Good one, @vinothkannans! I noticed this topic the other day and totally forgot that I’d written this plugin.
Glancing at the code, it’s not immediately obvious to me that it might be broken (but that may not mean much). I can’t quite remember who I wrote it for to know whether it’s still in use (I think it was in use sometime after that, but really don’t remember).
If it doesn’t work, I’ll accept a PR, or if there’s a budget or some plea that will make me fix it for free, I’ll be happy to fix it if someone contacts me.
Thank You @vinothkannans for sharing this plugin information and It is working fine @pfaffman after adding this in setting–>external system avatars url
/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/{name_first_letter}/{color}/{size}.png
Thank you!
Great! Glad you figured it out, @Pandiyan . It looks like the readme for the plugin describes changing that setting. Is there some way that I could change the language to make it more clear?
I added the line:
So hopefully that’ll make it more clear.
I guess we can move this to Support ? It would appear that you’re the first person in 5 years to want this feature. 
This is Good @pfaffman and it’s more than enough to understand.
Since we are using Employee ID as a UserName, the profile pic was common for everyone here. So this plugin helps me to show the variation in default profile pic.
I would like to suggest to @Discourse Team that this feature should be there in site setting as an option.(UserName first letter as Profile Pic / FullName first letter as Profile Pic)
Thank you!
That’s what Contribute > Feature is for. I don’t make those decisions. But my point was that it looks like two sites in five years have wanted this as a feature (many more could be silently using my plugin and never asking about it here, so this isn’t an accurate count). Usually such a feature gets added only when many sites (or a few high paying sites) want such a feature.
