As you've probably noticed, myself and damn near everyone else with a Premium Account (or suddenly in possession of one) are going about changing or fixing their name. I still sorta' wish devArt would have implemented this some seven years ago when I noticed the first grumblings of folks who had to ditch old accounts simply to change their usernames. It's good to see they actually found a way to do it. = )

I know I didn't change things up greatly on my end. I simply tweaked my existing handle so it's properly capitalized. I did sleep on it though. I was thinking about going the same route as many of the artists I know have been doing for a number of years - changing their information to their real name or the name they sign their stuff with. It makes sense, really. My name is 'Erik Amill'. It's on my business cards, it's on my appilcations, it's on my invoices. It's how many places know me. Then I did a little math...

I am known by 'ProphetEKA' or 'ProphEKA' by more folks both online and off. If you search either name, Google returns 102,000 and 1,700 results respectively for those search terms. I'm the top spot for the those terms with the rest of the links being either directly or indirectly related to something of mine for a number of pages. Google standard is 10 per page and I checked 10 pages back. Searching my real name returns 145,000 results with a mix of my stuff, a few other folks with spellings close to mine, folks with the last name 'Erik' who just happen to be mentioned in articles using mills, and far less Amillennialists links than in years past.

Add to all that info that I've been pretty much using the same tag for my stuff since the late 90's and you get close to 15 years worth of use/abuse/connection to me. That's a strong enough argument to pretty much keep things the way they are on my end. = )

Though my research was a little overboard, it is something to think about now that folks here can switch their username around. Here's a short list of things to keep in mind:
- Like a standard URL, your username should be relatively short or easy to remember. For real names, brevity goes out the window but are generally easier to remember.
- If you are thinking about changing over to your real name, do some hunting and see if your nickname might carry more 'net-based umph than you think.
- Look and see what else comes up when searching your new username. For a number of years, searching my real name just brought up a bunch of god stuff and information about mills. Only recently has that died down.
- If you're a working professional or plan to be sometime in the future, take a moment and ask if your fans/possible employers can find you in the sea of folks online.
- If you have an auto-generated name with a bunch of numbers at the end, ask yourself if that's the best face you can show to the world. You have the chance to change it, you can make it better.

As with everything here, these are just the ramblings of one artist-type guy. Suggestions, not rules. Take them as you wish. = )