PGSure. Sorry for the long post.
Background – I manage a site for a traditional jazz band. It is made up of area high school students. The band is in their fourth year of existence and the alumni list is starting to get long, so I have chosen your plugin to help me manage not only the alumni but the current members as well.
The band is a standard trad jazz setup with a front line and rhythm section, so 9 instruments (including vocals).
Currently I am using the Title field for their primary instrument and the Organization field for the school they attend. I would like to make those Instrument and School. School is self-explanatory, yes? I can probably list the instruments as categories, but getting just current members’ primary instrument listed on the site with their name and school is why I want a field for that. I can use categories to list the other instruments they played while in the band.
A date field that allows me to create start and end dates for each member would be helpful as well. How I would use it follows below.
As the alumni list grows, I plan to eliminate the current db dump for a page that uses text fields, lists, image links, or some combination of that to search the db. A date field in the db that covers each members time with the band would really help with results. Every year there are members leaving and joining. Searching during a particular time frame will be a common occurrance, as I don’t anticipate members looking for someone more than three years earlier than they were in the band – they would have been in elementary school during those years. They also won’t search more than a year or two after they leave the band because in most cases, the bands’ average turnover rate will eliminate anyone they would know. Searching by time frame will also help the director and the band sponsors when they search for info.
There is also a need for tracking the festivals attended, awards won, and scholarships earned for each member. Since not all of those are going to be the same, fields would be a great way of keeping track of, and searching, that info.
I hope that helps.