Display first name instead of username

Question

I have a plugin that outputs username after login, I want it to display first name instead. Here is the code that does it.

        global $userdata,$user_identity;
        get_currentuserinfo();

        if ($userdata->ID>0) {
            // User is logged in
            echo '<div class="login">' . $before_widget . $before_title . "Welcome ".$user_identity . $after_title . '</div>';
            echo '
                <ul class="login-links">
                    <li><a href="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-login.php?action=logout&amp;redirect_to=http://'.$_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].'">Logout</a></li>
                    <li><a href="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-admin">Dashboard</a></li>
                    <li><a href="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-admin/profile.php">Profile</a></li>

                </ul>
            ';
        } else {
        // User is NOT logged in!!!
                echo $before_widget . $before_title . '<div class="login">Welcome Guest, <a href="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-admin">Login</a></div>' . $after_title;

$user_identity is what outputs that username I searched through wordpress forums and someone said I have to add $current_user->first_name to the code. The question is, where and how do I add it? I assume I would need to add it to this line global $userdata,$user_identity; But how do I properly syntax that? I tried doing this but getting syntax errors global $userdata,$user_identity = $current_user->first_name;

Your help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Change global $userdata,$user_identity; to global $userdata, $current_user, $user_identity;

Then change

echo '<div class="login">' . $before_widget . $before_title . "Welcome ".$user_identity . $after_title . '</div>';

to

echo '<div class="login">' . $before_widget . $before_title . "Welcome ".$current_user->user_firstname . $after_title . '</div>';

You can see all the info in the codex : http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_currentuserinfo

Answer 2

$user_identity uses the 'Display name publicly as' option on the user's profile page to decide what to display. So you can edit there.

Alternatively, to always display the first name, you can use the global $current_user: to get the first name:

$current_user->user_firstname

See the Codex