Steven Zahm@ David
I have replied to every question you had…
I answered the other support topics, here and here… there are no issue they seems like a usage questions to me… other the trouble you had with the shortcode which it seems you have resolved.
I also replied to your email the other day. Here are my replies to the email in case you did not receive it. It seems you have some unknown issue with the Login extension, showing alternative forms… there are none, like i state below, just the standard login form. Honestly, I’m not sure I even understand what you are asking about in that instance.
re: Having enabled a sidebar, placed the [connections-login] shortcode in the page and supposedly installed a widget in the enabled sidebar for the Community Directory page, I am still going directly to the directory with no login form coming up.
If you go directory to the Community Directory page while logged in you will not see the login form because you are already logged in. Same for the widget, it will not display if you are logged in. I didn’t see any pages on the test site which had a sidebar. Perhaps you need to set the theme template page to one which has a sidebar??? This would be a function of the them, not the login widget.
re: In addition to just getting the thing running, how do I specify one of the alternative login forms?
Alternative login form? there is no alternative login form. This only outputs the standard WordPress login form by calling the same exact function WordPress calls to show the login form.
re: What is the procedure for implementing usernames (I suppose that is Entry ID)?
User names are created when you create a new user. This is not specific to Connections, to have access to your site, you have to add users, WordPress will not let you create a user without a username and email.
re: Perhaps all of this can be avoided if you can point me to concise documentation for the tool.
Sorry, there really is not documentation. All the plugin does is output the login form provided by WordPress. The only things this plugin actually adds is an simple shortcode and widget to show it. So besides adding a widget to a sidebar or putting a or shortcode in a page, there is nothing to document. If you have suggestion, I’m very open to hearing them! Anything I can provide to make it easier for everyone is very welcomed.
re: I have imported, mapped all of my four search fields to Categories, the resulting categories list includes one each for all unique combinations of the values in each of my primary four categories — member status, interests, willing to serve, and neighborhood
Please read the “How do I import categories?” FAQ on the CSV Import page.
Looking at the screenshot… The source CSV file had the categories separated with semicolons rather than the required commas.
Unfortunately the only way to fix this is to delete the entries and categories and redo the import.