Hi Mat,
As you may recall, we had an unfortunate server crash a couple months ago, as Frederik explained in
this thread.
Following the manual restoration of the database, a little "bug" appeared, where certain non-alpha characters, when used as part of a members username here, will generate that message you viewed above. At the present time, whenever any punctuation character (except the underscore) is (or has been) used as part of members name, it renders that profile page to be unviewable by anyone, including the affected actual member, who will also be unable to view or modify their own profile page
.
Btw, the profiles are still there ... the admin staff has x-ray vision and can "see" them from backstage :lol:.
Unfortunately, there is no short term "cure" for this anomaly ... as I understand it, there are literally thousands of lines of PHP code that must be deciphered in order to find the "one word switch" that controls this function. If it's any consolation, this same anomaly is occurring on our sister forum, Talk Classical.
Anyway, we have developed a temporary work-around for this, that is to modify the member name and remove the [now] problematic non-alpha characters from ones profile. When a members username is changed, all prior and present posts made by that member will then show the new/modified username. Post counts are not affected, nor are the users "rank" or any special custom titles. The only thing that changes is the username, everything else remains extant.
I must mention that modification of a member's name
only takes place in full knowledge of, and with the member's permission. We would never change a users name without them knowing about it first. Of course, if an affected member does not wish to alter their name, we will leave it as is.
Special note to members who are experiencing this anomaly:
If you would like to have your username modified, please contact Frederik, Robin or myself via PM. Performing the username change is a simple two mouse click operation and takes about one minute
.