WordPress is powerful … but occasionally you’ll hit a problem where you hunt for hours online trying to find\u00a0a solution. You may find\u00a0plenty of other people\u00a0searching for the some thing too, but no decent\u00a0answers.<\/p>\n
For me searching for how to use\u00a0update_user_meta display_name<\/strong>\u00a0to change the default display name<\/strong> when a new user creates an account was one of those searches.<\/p>\n In case you’re struggling with this too, hopefully this quick post will help you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When a new user registers on the front end of your site, WordPress often decides to make the user name their display name. \u00a0Which doesn’t give the user a good experience. \u00a0Depending on the site I’m developing, I prefer to have the display name set to Firstname Lastname or just Firstname.<\/p>\n In WordPress the\u00a0update_user_meta() function\u00a0can be used to update a user’s first_name, billing_first_name, nickname and many other fields. \u00a0So it would be natural to expect to be able to update their display_name the same way, right?<\/p>\n Well unfortunately display_name can’t be updated with update_user_meta.<\/p>\n The pre_user_display_name hook filters a user\u2019s display name before<\/strong> the user is created or updated. That’s what we need to use.<\/p>\n Here’s example code I used\u00a0when I had added a\u00a0“First Name” field to the registration form. \u00a0I wanted the display name to be set as their first name.<\/p>\nFirstly the problem:<\/h2>\n
update_user_meta<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Use\u00a0pre_user_display_name instead<\/h2>\n