That shortcode argument does not exist at this point.
I will consider that for the next update, or a possible future add-on.
Can you give me a little more information on how you envision that working, and how you would use it?
For example, if you have a “manager” position (your example), do you have a lot of managers that you just want to display on their own page? It will still look like the full directory, but only show managers?
If that’s the case, it would not be too difficult to do that. If you had something else in mind, let me know.
If there is only one manager, or just one person you want to show, well then each member is a custom post type, so they will already have their own “page” that you could link to for detailed info on that person.
Hi there,
THX for your reply.
Right, a real life example: say we have 20 IT technical persons, but their functional titles may be a Web Designer, Programmer, System Administrator, IT Manager, Network Engineer…and so on.
For the time being, my workaround is put their functional title next to their name(e.g. Mr. Peter Jackson (System Admin) )and assigned his position as “Technical Staff”.
To further extend, we would like to show only “Technical Staff” on particular page, that will be great if i can put something like: [pta_member_directory position=”Technical Staff”]
Thanks for the great plugin and looking forward for the update.
Best
Simon
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the example. That helps.
Adding that shortcode argument shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
One other quick question, though:
Would it be better if there were sub-categories for positions, so you didn’t have to add their job titles as part of their name?
Technically, WordPress allows hierarchical categories for posts, and since Members are a custom post type, and positions are categories, I could enable hierarchy for them. However, that then really changes things for displaying the directory, the contact form recipient select list, as well as the page for sorting positions. That would be a big rewrite.
However, I have on my “to do” list to create a custom fields extension for this plugin. That would allow you to define your own extra fields to enter for each member and display in the directory, which, for you, could be the functional title of each person in your Technical Staff. That way you don’t have to group their title in with their name. This would also be MUCH easier for me to implement than now trying to switch to using hierarchies for categories (positions).
Super busy with my “day job” for a while (producing and mixing music), so not sure when I’ll be able to get to all of that, but I will as soon as possible.
Hi again,
Yeah..custom field is good enough as this function is being requested by other users in the support forum.
Take your time and no rush, there’s always a workaround! :p
Thanks again
Simon
OK… I’ll mark this as resolved for now, since this is more of a feature request than a support issue.
However, if you are good at programming, or know someone else who is, most of the hooks and filters are already in place to allow fairly easy extension of this plugin without having to directly modify the plugin (so future updates won’t break anything you changed).
This feature is now added in the update that I’ll be uploading later today.
If you set a position via shortcode argument or url argument, in the new version, then the directory will only show members who hold that position. Also, that directory will NOT show the position column in the table, instead just displaying the position at the top of the table.
Also, if you are not using the “location” feature for actual office locations, you could use that to save and display the functional titles of your members, instead of putting those in the member names. Location can be used as a custom field since you can change the table heading for “Location” in the options. Right now it will still say location on the edit member page, but you can make it say whatever you want in the public directory. I may work on making that a bit more customizable as well for a future release, so whatever label you give “Location” will show up everywhere in the plugin.
