How to build a staff members directory ?

• Quercus

• September 14, 2016 at 10:58 pm

Hello,

I’m building a website for a NGO about scientist and research. My goal on this project is to build a staff members directory based on search criterias.

I’m quite new to wordpress. My biggest joy is setting up every criterias with « Advanced Custom Fields » plugin (ACF Version 4.4.8) . To me this is a major plugin.

I use pages (not posts) to build the directory.

My problem is I know a very little PHP programming and this side of WP. Can anyone help me to accelerate my learning curve ?

NB my site runs today on mamp localy.

Here’s my goal :

Each staff member is qualified by two « themes » (this a kind of criteria). One principal (always required) and one optional.
Those two « themes » are chosen by the user via a « select » field type containing the different themes (5 themes).

Each staff member is also qualified by « keywords » (20+). Those are selected by the user via a « checkbox » field type.

Each staff member has a custom page template (staff-member.php + content-staff.php) where I inject all the informations and criteria. This is OK.

The problem :

How to set up a page an intro displayed with
<?php the_content(); ?>
and an unordered list of « themes » plus a paragraph containing each « keyword » ordered alphabeticaly. Each « theme » and « keyword » are links (encapsuled in <a href=« « ></a>) and are leading to a list of staff members sorted by « sorting key » (text field type) which is Firstname+Lastname.

Here’s 2 wireframe explaining this.

I’ve read the forum but I didn’t find the answer.

Many Thanks

• James

• September 15, 2016 at 1:50 pm

Hi @quercus

For something like this, I suggest you use a custom post type instead. You can easily create custom post type by using a plugin like Custom Post Type UI. For the themes and keywords, I suggest you use custom taxonomies.

With this setup, the themes and keywords will create relationship just like categories and tags for a post. Thus you will have archive pages that list the staff members.

To set the theme and keywords, you can use the custom taxonomy meta box just like a normal post.

For further information regarding custom post type, kindly visit WordPress community instead.

I hope this helps 🙂

• Quercus

• September 19, 2016 at 10:42 pm

Waow ! Thank you.
This is a more appropriate way of doing it. And it’s a more obvious way to complete my learning curve. Thank for the plugin idea. Otherwise I was looking to Generate WP website.
I discovered the Post Type Generator and the Taxonomy Generator.

So problem solved.
THX AGAIN !

I keep ACF to inject other related infos to every staff member.