[Brian]

Hello,

I need a directory plugin, but I have a specific requirement.

I need to display:
– a “members” page, where all the members of the directory will be displayed (a small excerpt of the file, and then you click on the excerpt and go to the member profile)
– a “directory” page, where will only appear some members. That’s why I need some kind of field “display/don’t display” in the admin, and depending on this field, the member will be displayed on this directory page or not.
Also, members that are “not displayed” can’t appear as results of the user when he wants to search something in the directory.

I’d like to know if it’s possible, and how.

Maybe what I said can’t be done as I explained, but there may be another way of doing it.

Could you please answer me quick, as I need to make my mind very quickly for the plugin choice.

Thanks a lot.

Brian

[Steven Zahm]

@ Brian

re: a “members” page, where all the members of the directory will be displayed (a small excerpt of the file, and then you click on the excerpt and go to the member profile)

You would want one of the following templates, Circled, Excerpt Plus or Gridder.

Choose the one you like best. There is a demo for each and examples of their use on live third party sites.

re: a “directory” page, where will only appear some members. That’s why I need some kind of field “display/don’t display” in the admin, and depending on this field, the member will be displayed on this directory page or not.
Also, members that are “not displayed” can’t appear as results of the user when he wants to search something in the directory.

You can use categories to partition the entries into multiple directories many, many, users do this. The simplest implementation to do this would be like this:

• Create two categories. One named Members the other named Directory.
• Create two pages. One for members and the other for the directory.
• You would then use the category shortcode option on each of those pages, limiting each to their related category.
• When you add entries, you can then choose to list them only as a member or as in the directory or both by selecting the appropriate categories.

You can test this out now without many any purchases because this is a builtin feature.

Hope this helps!

[Brian]

Steven, thanks for your explanations, it’s very clear.

I think I wil buy Excerpt plus template, it’s the one that I like the most.
But in the meantime, I’d like to know if there’s a way to make small changes to the existing template?
Is it possible to style the existing template with css?

[Steven Zahm]

@ Brian

Here’s a couple links for you that I think will answer you questions in detail.

re: I’d like to know if there’s a way to make small changes to the existing template?

• http://connections-pro.com/2014/06/04/quicktip-custom-template-override-files/

re: Is it possible to style the existing template with css?

• http://connections-pro.com/2014/05/07/quicktip-custom-css-templates/

[Brian]

Thanks again Steven for your great help!

One last question: I was able to display the members in a nice way – I’ll buy the template as soon as I get the money.
There’s still one thing I was not able to do:
When on the members’ list, I have the picture, the address, phone number, etc. but I don’t like the labels.
For example, for the address, it’s written “Work” instead of “Address” – because I want to display the work address, but I don’t want “work” to be the label, I just want “Address”.
Same thing for the phone: it’s written “Work Phone” while I’d rather have just “Phone” for the label, even if I want to display the work phone. See what I mean?

Is there a way to change that ?

Thank you.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Brian

Here’s another link for you… it explains how you can change the labels globally in Connections.

• http://connections-pro.com/2014/05/04/quicktip-easy-text-changing/

Hope that helps!

[Brian]

Thanks Steven, it surely helps.
However, is there a list of all the fields names?
In the example, one field is str_home_phone.
So I tried with str_work_phone but it didn’t work…
Is it the wrong field name?

Also, there’s something strange:
I created a page called card.php and I placed it in my theme directory, in connections-templates/card (I followed the tutorial you sent me).
I customized the template and everything was ok.
Now my page displays the data the way I want.

Then I decided to rename this template to card-category-equipe.php so that it would only affect my page called “equipe” (this page only displays the members that have the equipe slug).

Problem: my formatting disappeared. As if the template was not working anymore.

Did I do something wrong ?

Could you please help me ?

Thanks a lot

[Steven Zahm]

@ Brian

re: Then I decided to rename this template to card-category-equipe.php so that it would only affect my page called “equipe” (this page only displays the members that have the equipe slug).

This template file will only be loaded when using a Connections permalink for a category, like so:

http://domain.tld/directory-home-page/cat/category-slug/

The category slug must be a Connections category slug. It will not work from page slugs.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Brian

re: However, is there a list of all the fields names?
In the example, one field is str_home_phone.
So I tried with str_work_phone but it didn’t work…
Is it the wrong field name?

If this is in regards to the Excerpt Plus template, the accepted shortcode options can be found on its doc page.

That said, I recommend using the the method I referred you to in the QuickTip in my previous reply.

[Brian]

1- Yes Steven, I’m trying to use the method you told me, but I didn’t choose to use a plugin. Instead I’d like to use the method described here:
http://connections-pro.com/faqs/how-do-i-use-the-str_-shortcode-options/

When I use this shortcode: [connections category='4' order_by='id' str_home_phone='Téléphone perso'] it’s not working: it keeps on displaying the standard label which is “Téléphone maison”.

Any idea why ? How can I find out the variable names used in the card theme ?

2- About the templates, I did as you said and I tried this URL: http://mydomainname/annuaire/cat/membres/
(annuaire is the directory home page, and I chose cat as the slug for categories)

Result: it doesn’t display the membres page, but the directory main page. But anyway, I don’t want the URL of the membres to be so long.

I’d like to have http://mydomainname/membres/ as the URL. So I created a page called membres and I use the shortcode:
[connections category='3' exclude_category='4' str_work_phone='Téléphone']

And I’d like to use the template I created for this category. Is there another way to do it ? Even if I have to code ?

I don’t care at all to code, but I need to have a different template for the different categories, or I won’t be able to keep Connections to do what I want (which is a pity because I like this plugin, I think it’s very well done, both easy to use and very efficient).

Any idea ?

[Author]

Posts