[Kate Powell]

Hi,

Just curious but is the widget pack the only way to add a search function to your directory?

Looking at the widget pack and its only 9$ but I was just curious before I go back to the purchaser of the products and start asking for more stuff. We just picked up csv import and its great so Im fully confident on more of your products and I know they wont question me but I just want to be sure.

The category list option in the widgets pack seems worth it anyway instead of just making a main link page subbing out to the categories manually.

Thanks!!! :)

[Steven Zahm]

@ Kate

All the premium templates also include the keyword search feature. A couple of the template have it disabled by default but can easily be enabled thru a setting.

Hope that answers your question thoroughly!

ps. If you plan on use the Category List widget, you should not use the category filter feature in the templates. Instead you I would recommend the Enhanced Categories extension.

[Kate Powell]

Im about 50/50 on what the templates actually are. Are they templates on how an entry is displayed or a template of pre configured back end settings you can adjust?

So far I dont have any category filters since Im using the stock entry list template. Right now my directory just shows all 300 people and I turned their departments into links and it filters from that.

I was hoping to do a drop down list of the categories or departments and have a search function for finding people by name.

We a re a very small company so the easier the better as the last time this was all updated was well before me and nothing in the back end (apache, php, mysql) had been updated in a VERY long time and the original directory breaks upon updating. Since our intranet is built on wordpress I took it and just want to make a very easy, simply directory I can show the usual individual how to update by entry. Previously it was a sql database edited through access we had to give people and it was a REAL PITA.

If the widget pack can give me a search bar and category (or department special field) drop down I should be set and could make this thing live. Right now its all in our test environment and I will have to run my security (nessus) scans then import it all. Working in our test envrio is not the most user friendly thing and Id like to get it out and just work on it in our production system.

Thanks for the help so far, REALLY impressed :)

[Steven Zahm]

@ Kate

RE: Im about 50/50 on what the templates actually are. Are they templates on how an entry is displayed or a template of pre configured back end settings you can adjust?

Basically they control how the entries are displayed on the site’s front end. You can checkout each template on the template demo pages.

HOpe that helps!

[Kate Powell]

I have seen the demo page. I honestly like the way the stock entry looks on the page as it resembles our current directory. For the most part Im just looking to make the main page of the directory a department list (or drop down) and a search bar to search for an employee. Im handing this over to the original person eventually so I would like to make it as user friendly for them as humanly possible in the end.

If we purchase the widget pack and it doesnt do what Im thinking it does and we need to go a template route could we do an exchange if soon enough?
thanks

[Steven Zahm]

@ Kate

You should go with the template. The reason. You have 300 entries. While the page may load, that is creating quite a bit of server load each time the page is visited. This is not a Connections limitation, the same issue would arise if you were to try to load 300 WP posts on a single page. The template supports pagination too so you can limit the number shown per page. The cMap template defaults to 20 entries per page.

Hope this helps!

[Kate Powell]

Thanks Steve

Even though there are 300 entries the most at a time might be about 15-20 as they are broken by department. I will look at the cmap template to see if it will work. I would more than likely allow people to load an entire company list they would more than likely be searching for just one person or a department of about 15.

I put in for us to just get the template for now. Hate to be a bother but again were a small municipal company and I pretty much volunteered for this (lol) so I just need to be sure what Im buying will be correct so Im not coming back asking for something else in a couple days.

You’ve been a MASSIVE help! Thanks

[Kate Powell]

Installed Cmap, like it but im getting

Warning: Illegal string offset ‘template’ in C:\xampp\htdocs\wp-content\plugins\connections\includes\template\class.template-customizer.php on line 150

and it wont let me show the images or search by category

Thanks

[Kate Powell]

heres my line 150

/**
     * Callback for the `cn_template_customizer_template` filter which sets the template used on the directory home
     * page to the template being customized.
     *
     * @see cnShortcode_Connections::shortcode()
     *
     * @access private
     * @since  8.4
     *
     * @param array $atts
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function getTemplate( $atts ) {

        $atts['template'] = $this->slug;

        return $atts;
    }

    /**

[Kate Powell]

okay, so you don’t get annoyed

Im trying to edit my original comments but it wont let me which is why Im posting multiples. Sorry if this is looking sloppy but I don’t have a choice.
As it turns out scratch that code issue it was only happening during live preview.

Im still having a problem getting the entry images to show though. Any tips? They worked previously fine.
Thanks

Thanks for this suggestion template, its really nice!

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