[Steven Zahm]

@ Ellen

RE: I think it will be a definite improvement to hide the “Custom Fields” metabox by default – it was definitely confusing to see that box and read instructions about custom fields, when that isn’t the best way to go about adding a custom field!

Yep, I understand. The confusion itself comes directly from WP. I’ll try to explain…

Pre WP 5 if you scrolled to the bottom of the edit page/post admin page you would find a section named “Custom Fields”. This was a generic way to add support in core WP. In WP 5, you need a plugin to enable this feature again.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-fields-gutenberg/

On the add/edit page/post admin pages you find other sections, called metaboxes, often these are added by themes and plugins. These are also called “custom fields”. Notice the lack of capitalization.

Connections mimics these features. So it has a “Custom Fields” section (metabox) and “custom fields” which can be registered as covered in the dev docs.

RE: looks like I actually can’t search by this new field yet.

Navigate to the Connections : Settings admin page and click the Search tab enable search for the custom text field you registered.

Now, when you do keyword searches, that field will be searched for matches.

RE: I need to be able to add another drop down filter for “Location,” next to the category one that is available by default.

Adding such a feature would require custom development.

RE: The “Location” field is not visible on an entry’s preview panel or in an entry’s profile view page.

Make sure the edit the correct template file. This is probably one of the most common mistakes.

The Gridder template files are found in this folder:

../wp-content/plugins/connections-gridder/

The card.php file is the template used when displaying the grid of photos with the contact info panel.

After adding the code to display the field, you will very likely have to add custom CSS too. In order to achieve the grid layout, both the font size and line height are set to default to 0. So, you’ will need to add CSS to set the font-size and line-height to the desired sizes.

Place the code at line 119 to have it display before the bio excerpt. Make sure to take care of the required opening/closing php tags (<php and ?>)

The card-single.php file is used to display the entry detail/profile page. Place the code in line 72 to have it display after the bio.

RE: I placed the code at the end of the file, just before the last “ tag.

Make sure to take the code is between the required opening/closing php tags (<php and ?>) otherwise the code will just be displayed as text on the screen on not run by WordPress/Connections.

Hope this helps!

[Steven Zahm]

The issue seems to be the use of Super PWA. Try deactivating that plugin for testing.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mary Ellen

Sorry to hear you are having trouble! Connections does not really “detect” the PHP version, per say, it asks PHP which version it is.

If you would like to have confirmation on which PHP version running, try this plugin:

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-serverinfo/

I suspect both Connections and this plugin will report the same version. Let me know if they differ.

If they match, you’ll need to contact the web host support team because either the cPanel option is not actually changing the running version or it is but is being overridden by a environmental variable, perhaps set in the .htaccess file.

Hope this helps! Let me know.

ps. Sorry but I am not able to change the email address in which my posting notification of my reply is sent to.

[Steven Zahm]

I’m sorry maybe I do not understand… the screen shot looks like the search was move to the bottom. It is beside the pagination which is at the bottom.

Also, I’m am unsure of what program update you are waiting for???

[Steven Zahm]

You need to edit the cmap.php file found in this folder:

../wp-content/plugins/connections-cmap/

On line 847 you shold find:

add_action( 'cn_action_list_before-' . self::$template->getSlug() , array( __CLASS__, 'formClose'), 99999 );

Change it to:

add_action( 'cn_action_list_after-' . self::$template->getSlug() , array( __CLASS__, 'formClose'), 99999 );

On line 852 you should find:

add_action( 'cn_action_list_before-' . self::$template->getSlug() , array( __CLASS__, 'searchForm') , 1 );

Change it to:

add_action( 'cn_action_list_after-' . self::$template->getSlug() , array( __CLASS__, 'searchForm') , 1 );

Please note that is this not supported and may not function as expected. These changes will be lost as updates to cMap are released.

Hope this helps!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Ellen

RE: Just confirming that I should be adding this filter using the Code Snippets plugin?

Yes, this filter should be added using the Code Snippet plugin.

RE: I can’t add custom CSS to the theme

CSS can not be use to properly scale/cop an image optimized for web delivery.

RE: adjust the shortcode to make this happen?

If there were a shortcode option, I would have most definitely had supplied it instead of a filter.

RE: what is the difference between this and the image settings within the plugin? It seems like these are the same options as exist in the image settings, and those have very little effect.

As mentioned, those settings do not affect Gridder. Gridder will create its required images on demand based on the supplied image size. The crop and quality are not exposed as options in Gridder so the only way to change those defaults is thru the filters.

The crop and quality are based on the same defaults that WordPress itself provides to give a consistent experience.

Those settings only affect the default cached images sizes which are created when an image is added to an entry. Presently these primarily exist now to support legacy templates which did not have option to change image size like Gridder and other templates provide. I expect to remove these settings at some point due to them being less and less relevant in the current architecture of Connections.

I hope I have thoroughly answered your questions.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Ellen

The templates come styled as is, but, you can use CSS to change any of the styling you wish. The templates provide many classes which can be used as CSS selectors.

here’s some example CSS to get you started:

#cn-gridder .cn-gridder-overlay {
    font-family: cursive;
}

#cn-gridder .cn-gridder-overlay .fn {
    font-size: 16px;
    font-weight: 500;
    text-transform: none;
}
#cn-gridder .cn-gridder-overlay .title {
    font-size: 12px;
    font-weight: 300;
    text-transform: none
}

Tweak as desired, add it to the theme’s custom CSS area, generally found in the Customizer. (you may have to add the !important flag to each property.

Hope this helps!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Ellen

RE: Why do you recommend adding a custom text field using Code Snippets and adding a template override, rather than using Advanced Custom Fields?

By adding it the way explained in the dev docs, it automagically adds it as a Content Block Which can be enabled/disabled to display in templates (just like you had enabled the “Custom Fields” content block).

Adding it as a text field also registers is as an option on the Connections : Search settings admin page. Enabling it will tell Connections to also search this when doing keyword searches.

The next update to Connections will actually start hiding, by default, the “Custom Fields” metabox matching core WordPress handling of the same field on its Pages and Posts admin pages. This is not going to be removed, if you find that is does not display, you will be able to click the Screen Options tab in the upper right to turn it back on. Nearly all existing users will not notice any difference, the new hidden default will primarily only affect new installations.

RE: the article you shared states that the template override file will not be re-written in a wordpress update, but are there any cases I should watch out for where it would be re-written?

When WordPress updates a plugin, the existing version plugin files are deleted… So, as long as you do not modify any of the files which exist within the Connections plugin files you do not need to worry about files getting overwritten. This is not a Connections bug or limitation. This is just how WordPress manages updates. Many, many plugin offer ways to use template files which will not be overwritten during updates.

Hope I have thoroughly answered your questions!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Martin

Make sure you have the Directory Home Page option set on the Connections :: Settings admin page under the General tab.

The page selected as the Directory Home page must contain the [connections] shortcode. This is the last step in the installation of the Widget Pack.

Hope this helps!

[Steven Zahm]

Great to hear!

If you have a moment, I would truly appreciate a review as they really do make a difference.

https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/connections/reviews/

Thanks in advance for your time!

[Author]

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