How do I see my name in the panel in Gnome Shell?

I have Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS and from installation, my name has not appeared in the panel. I have enabled it via dconf in org.gnome.desktop.privacy, but it has yet to appear even after a re-login and restart.

Can I receive some assistance into the cause of this and a solution?

This is where I would like it to appear:

I think the username is no longer displayed in the top panel (that dconf key only applies to the menu now, as the description shows). If you do wish to have it shown there, install this extension.

Unfortunately, that extension lists compatibility for only a single version of GNOME Shell (3.10.4). So we'll need to update the list for it to work:

wget https://extensions.gnome.org/download-extension/[email protected]?version_tag=3835 -O [email protected]
mkdir [email protected]
cd [email protected]
unzip [email protected]
sed -i 's/"3.10.4"/&, "'$(gnome-shell --version | awk '{print $3}')'"/' metadata.json
cd -
mv [email protected] .local/share/gnome-shell/extensions

(You could also manually obtain the version using gnome-shell --version, then update the metadata.json file using an editor.)

Then restart GNOME Shell (press AltF2, type r, press Enter). Then use gnome-tweak-tool to enable the extension:

$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 3.12.2

An explanation:

• The Extensions website doesn't offer a way to download the extension directly. So we have to manually fish the download link and download it.
• The zip file so downloaded doesn't have a top level directory, so I create one, following the convention I saw in .local/share/gnome-shell/extensions: name@website. Then unzip the file.

• metadata.json is a JSON file. This attribute is what we're looking for:

  "shell-version": [
    "3.10.4"
  ], 
  

  I used sed to look for "3.10.4", then append the current version obtained via $(gnome-shell --version | awk '{print $3}') to it. gnome-shell --version usually prints GNOME Shell x.y.z, so I use awk to get the third field (x.y.z). JSON arrays take the form [a,b,c,...], so all I need to do is add ,"x.y.z" to the existing entry.

• Move the extension to the proper directory, then restart the shell for it to be noticed, since this wasn't done through the GNOME Shell interface.

As a late update to this question, the extension Add Username to Top Panel can be directly installed from the Gnome Extensions website and appears to be well maintained at the time of writing.