When a user updates nickname in profile-edit first_name and last_name is cleared

[thomasoriis]

Nickname clears first_name and last_name.

To reproduce the bug -
1) goto page /members/<user>/profile/edit/group/1/
2) update value of nickname
3) save
4) Goto user profile in the backend and notice that first_name and last_name is empty.

I have an idea to solve the issue. If first_name and last_name is added to the form I think it will solve the issue.
The root cause is as I see it is that: wp_insert_user expects that first_name and last_name is set else they are set to blank.

​https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/4.2.2/src/wp-includes/user.php#L0 check line 1919

This line: $first_name = empty( $userdatafirst_name? ) ? : $userdatafirst_name?; same goes for last_name.

However user should be able to deside if first_name and last_name should be visible to other users.

[thomasoriis]

Actually the problem is resolved when I disable bp_disable_profile_sync. So I think you have a problem in that method ? xprofile_sync_wp_profile().

[DJPaul]

@thomasoriis, what are you changing the nickname to? Anything, or some specific pattern?

[thomasoriis]

Replying to DJPaul:

@thomasoriis, what are you changing the nickname to? Anything, or some specific pattern?

@DJPaul > actually I update the value from trAdmin32 to trAdmin321 or something like that. But I don't think it is caused by the input. But remember you have to turn on the sync option.

[lakrisgubben]

I can't reproduce the issue (trunk and 2015 theme) where the first_name becomes empty by updating the name in the buddypress profile. But, if ones name in the bp-profile is only one word then last_name will be set to empty (if it has a space in it then the first word will be first_name and the following last_name). I can see that this could maybe be a bit confusing, but also quite in line with the spirit of 'BuddyPress to WordPress profile syncing'.

[DJPaul]

I'm going to close this because we've periodically tried to figure out what's going on here for about a year, and haven't been able to reproduce.

We can re-open the ticket when we figure it out in the future. Thanks for the report, @thomasoriis, and I'm sorry that we haven't been able to fix it yet.