usernames with full stops in

I'm having a problem where some of my users have a full stop / period in the middle of the name so for example

john.smith

When they try to login the get a file not found error, I've worked around this at the moment by altering the 404 error handling to redirect to the frontpage where it shows them as logged in but I'd like to fix this properly.

Why do they have dots in the middle ? it because we are using our main college usernames which are dotted to make it simpler for the staff so they only have one ID to remember. The are signed up automatically by directly injecting there username etc into the mysql backend.

Is it possible to alter the .htaccess file to allow this ??

Thanks
Brian

It's possible, but I have yet to find any anything online from people who have done it. There have been several posting on other web forums asking how to do it. I have yet to see someone post how it's done. The problem is that the period (.) in mod_rewrite gets treated as another variable. You may be able to add another variable at the end of your rewrite command for the user.php file and see if it works then. This, however, would assume that all users have periods in their usernames, however.

That wouldn't be a problem as the only person that doesn't is me :-) and I can always set myself up with a new account, so if you can post any pointers that would be great

Thanks
Brian