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Is there a list of common usernames to reserve in a new system?

I'm working on a site where users will have a custom URL e.g.: http://domain.com/username

I want to avoid the situation where a user registers and creates a username that I later need, e.g. if I want a page at domain.com/about and someone's already named themselves 'about'.

Does anyone have a list of generic words that could be added to a blacklist for this?

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evilcelery
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    "creates a username that I later need"? How can we know what you'll need later? A list of "generic words" would be called a "dictionary", wouldn't it? How can we guess what possible words you might possibly need in some possible future? – S.Lott Oct 20 '11 at 15:06
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    There are a lot of standard words used in websites e.g.: blog, features, about, contact, login, privacy etc. I've started compiling a list which is growing, just wondering as someone must have done this before. – evilcelery Oct 20 '11 at 15:07
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    Reading the title of this question, I had to think of [little bobby tables](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exploits_of_a_mom.png) ;) – DaveFar Oct 20 '11 at 15:32

4 Answers4

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I would have your users page as a sub section. Ie http://domain.com/users/username

There is no way we or even you could guess what pages you might want to create in future

Tom Squires
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    +1 a lot better than predicting future words you'll be using for your site... for that you need a shiny crystal ball – Spoike Oct 20 '11 at 15:10
  • I would usually do this but in my situation the simplicity of domain.com/username will be an advantage. – evilcelery Oct 20 '11 at 15:14
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    @evilcelery - So change **users** to **u** adding 3 extra characters will not take away an advantage. – Ramhound Oct 20 '11 at 15:15
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    @evilcelery: The magical "blacklist" of 100's of forbidden names, however, might remove this "advantage". – S.Lott Oct 20 '11 at 15:19
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    This is a bit like how Flickr have done it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/username/ but at some point they made it so http://www.flickr.com/username/ will redirect. However, some people have usernames that cannot redirect, such as `photos` and `about`. – Hugo Oct 20 '11 at 16:07
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What about using a prefix for site pages, like domain.com/site/about? And just make sure usernames can't include the '/' character.

Aidan Cully
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  • Still makes sense to exclude some usernames, at least in some cases. Otherwise someone seeing this URL: `domain.com/site/admin` might think the user/whatever at that URL is an admin somehow, for the whole `domain.com`. – KajMagnus May 10 '17 at 07:03
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There's some great answers on this StackOverflow question:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5316876/is-there-a-list-of-common-usernames-to-reserve-in-a-new-system

Here's the best list I've found:

http://blog.postbit.com/reserved-username-list.html

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Hartley Brody
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-1

You can always encode any http reserved characters in the username.
You should do this anyway in case someone decides to register the user name /../../etc/passwd

Martin Beckett
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    I am going to use that name for my next username on a forum :-) – Ramhound Oct 20 '11 at 15:20
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    @Ramhound, unless your really name is Bobby Tables http://xkcd.com/327/ – Martin Beckett Oct 20 '11 at 15:22
  • -1 as I'm not sure how this would apply to this problem. this still doesn't stop a user from registering 'about', and him wanting to create an 'about' page later. – Craige Oct 20 '11 at 15:44
  • @Craige - if you aren't having a /users/ there is nothing you can do about that without a crystal ball. But it is the correct solution to having a list of symbols/words that aren't acceptable form a URL point of view – Martin Beckett Oct 20 '11 at 16:32
  • @MartinBeckett - Then should this not be a comment on Tom Squires post? – Craige Oct 20 '11 at 18:25