[jbox]

Re. customizing auth.User to accept email based login - There isn't a completely DRY solution for this, but it's got much better - here is a tiny app that will do it for you:

http://github.com/johnboxall/django-email-auth

[stevenwei]

Does this actually work?

It seems to me there would be a major bug since the existing auth.User email field definition is not unique and allows blank values, and this app doesn't do anything to check against that, nor does it do anything to remove the existing username field definition.

[jbox]

customizing auth.User to accept an email based login

This app solves the problem by allowing users to log in using their email address.

It's not a bug that it doesn't deal with account creation - it's outside the scope of the app.

That said, it is fairly trivial to create a registration form that enforces the constraints you mentioned.