SUMMARY
The "alias" field contains information that uniquely identifies a person to the Nameserver. Usually, the contents of the "alias" field consists of a person's first initial, a hyphen, and complete last name. For example, "Paul B. Pomes" has an alias of "p-pomes".

Some people share the same first initial and last name; these people typically have a number added to the ends of their aliases, so that their aliases remain unique. For example, "John Doe" might have an alias of "j-doe1", and "Jane Doe" might have an alias of "j-doe2".

It is possible for the owner of a ph entry to change his or her alias by logging into ph and using the "edit" or "make" command; thus, some people have aliases that do not follow the conventions just described, such as the alias "SueG".

RESTRICTIONS ON ALIASES
If you decide to edit your alias field, you should be aware of certain restrictions placed on the field:

1. The alias field is limited to the characters a-z (uppercase is permitted, but ignored during ph lookups), 0-9, and the hyphen (-).
2. The alias field must not contain a space.
3. An alias must not be someone else's real name or nickname.
4. The contents of the alias field must be unique; if you try to change your alias to one already in use, ph will reject it.

CHANGING YOUR ALIAS
To change your alias, you must first login to ph. Then use the "make" or "edit" command to effect the desired changes:

EXAMPLES:

make alias="PaulP"

edit alias (You will be placed in the default text editor, usually vi.

Make the desired changes and save the file.)

If your change was successful, you should see the message: "200:1 entry changed". If you violated one of the restrictions listed above, an error message will appear.

For more information on the "alias" field and how it is used by the Nameserver, see the ph help for "aliases" and "e-mail".

SEE ALSO: aliases, e-mail, email, edit, make, fields, login, introduction, vi