[Sheldon Hildebrand]

Hi Steve, Purchased your plugin a while ago, but just now starting to implement. I was wondering how you envisioned your plugin being used for church directories?

My thoughts are that the directory would display families as families, single people as individuals. If you wanted information on a family member, you would click on that person to bring up their information. So, I would create a category ‘directory’ for families and single’s. Family members would not be in this category and configure directory page to only show ‘directory’ category.

Initial load of page is perfect, but when I click on individual family member, I get ‘no results’ (which makes sense as these people are not in the ‘directory’ category. The only work-arounds I see are

1. to show all entries, which means family members would appear twice, once in family and once as individual.
2. to create separate pages, one for family members (which would be information only, as you would not be able to get results on individuals) and one for individuals
3. to have the template show the detailed information for family members as they are listed in the family

Any suggestions? Or am I missing something obvious?

• This topic was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by Sheldon Hildebrand.

[Sheldon Hildebrand]

Starting to answer my own question. Using [connections list_type='family'] lists all the families (obvious, I know).

However, clicking on the individual within the family brings up individual information (wasn’t expecting that, assumed would come up with ‘no results’ as the individual was not a ‘family’).

So next / followup question. To display in the same list individuals who are part of a ‘family’ and individuals who are not, should I create a fake ‘family’ with the same name as the individuals?

EG. mr and mrs smith are part of the smith family, however john doe is not part of any family. To have him show up in the [connections list_type='family'], I’d have to create a family called doe, john with john doe as only family member?

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by Sheldon Hildebrand.

[Sheldon Hildebrand]

OK, thanks for your patience in letting me work through this. I’m slowly getting it to where it is functional. What I’ve done (for anyone else considering using it for church directory) is used a tab plugin (tabby) to create 4 tabs labelled ‘families’ (default entry card),’individuals’ (gridder),’volunteers’,’staff’, then set up [connections] to display appropriate information for each tab.

I deleted any ‘families’ which consisted of only one individual, so ‘family’ tab displays true families, ‘individual’ tab shows all individuals, ‘volunteers’ shows members of the individual volunteer groups (categories), and ‘staff’ …. etc.

Disadvantage of using tabs is that regardless of what tab you are in, category search or alpha index filter resets the page back to the first tab, and filter applies to ALL tabs.

Probably need to change tabs to separate pages, too bad, tabs is definitely cleaner look.

Anyways, loving the plugin, thanks for great work!

Current wishlist – using the default entry card for families, would be nice to inactivate the link for the name of the family, forcing people to click on individual members for more details. would eliminate an unnecessary step as all family information is already present.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Sheldon

Reading thru the posts it seems like you have a good grasp on the family type. I can not think of anything to add.

re: would be nice to inactivate the link for the name of the family, forcing people to click on individual members for more details.

This can be turned off globally on the Connections : Settings admin page under the Advanced tab under the Permalink by disabling the Name option.

This may or may not meet your needs but worth a try.

re: Probably need to change tabs to separate pages, too bad, tabs is definitely cleaner look.

Yes, I would recommend separate pages tabs can cause many side effects from putting the shortcode on the page multiple times. It’s doable as there are enough options in Connections to workaround most, but not all, side effects such as the resolving to the correct tab.

Hope that helps some!

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