Custom profile URL

I would like to be able to add a custom profile field to a users profile and use the value of this field as an alternate way of accessing the users profile.

For example:

I add a Custom Profile Field called: 'Nickname'
User enters 'Billy' into this CPF
User can now access their profile via 'page=members&type=view&id=Billy', in addition to the default of being able to access it via username and member-ID


Basically I want to duplicate the functionality of the 'Username' field which allows the user to access their profile from this fields value.

Some would say to just utilize the 'Username' field for this, but I want to allow users to have a username in addition to a nickname. Changing the 'username' field to their nickname would also change it on their forum posts but I want to keep their username on that instead of using their nickname.

I'm thinking it would require some more involved coding to properly implement this. Ideally, what would be needed is a custom profile field type for a nickname field that ensures it is unique against the nickname field and the main username field of other member profiles. Otherwise, if one user has a username Billy and different user has a nickname Billy, Composr wouldn't be able to know which one to use if you would be using username and nickname interchangeably as the id in the profile URL. The other aspect that would need to be changed is the parsing of the id in the profile URL for calling the member profile page. It would need to be altered so both the username and nickname fields are searched when looking up the requested member profile.

In short, it's certainly possible and could probably be implemented in at least a couple of different ways (other than I described above). But not without some additional programming.

Wordpress style. They use .htaccess to redirect the url to the member's profile page. So going to MySite.Com/members/Billy would actually call up 'page=members&type=view&id=Billy' but look loke MySite.Com/members/Billy