How to order staff list, custom attributes for staff members

[Lara Marsh]

Hi there –

I have Epic 2.0.1.

I have two staff groups. How do I change the order in the staff listing so that I can control it?

Also, is there a way to add custom attributes to the staff member so I can show them in a standard way on the staff list page and staff detail page?

The site I’m working on is http://timberridge.ponyclub.org

Thanks!
Lara

[Bill Robbins]

Hello Laura,

Great questions. For the staff ordering, I would suggest using the Simple Page Ordering plugin. It lets you order your staff and other items by drag and drop.

For the additional staff information, that can be done. How exactly depends on how comfortable you feel with doing a bit editing.

The simplest option is to just add the same information on each staff member, in the same spot in the content (like at the top or bottom) and format it uniformly.

Another option would be to edit the theme and use what WordPress calls “custom fields” to add that information in. This one does give you more flexibility. On a difficulty scale, this would fall in the moderate range as far as editing goes.

If you want to try that, let me know specifically what information you’d like to add and where you’d like to include it in the display and I’ll cook up some directions for you.

Take care,
Bill

[Lara Marsh]

Thanks, Bill!

I will give the Simple Page Ordering plug-in a try, thanks.

I am comfortable with some custom coding for the staff attributes. For each person in the group of “members”, I would like to show:
Photo
Name
Age
Years in Pony Club
Rating
Horse(s)
Biography

Thank you!
Lara

[Bill Robbins]

Alright Lara. Here’s what you’ll need to do to get started with adding those in.

1. Go to the Plugins section and select Add New. Search for the WP Editor plugin and install/activate it. Some of the files we’ll need to change aren’t accessible by the built-in theme editor.
2. Go to the Appearance section and select Theme Editor.
3. From the list of files on your right, click on the “includes” folder and then the “custom-meta-boxes” folder inside it. Then click on the epic-meta-boxes.php file there.
4. Find this spot that starts on line 191:

   
   array(
   	'name' => __( 'Optional Link URL', 'organizedthemes' ),
   	'desc' => __( 'The URL for your custom link.', 'organizedthemes' ),
   	'id'   => 'optional_url',
   	'type' => 'text',
   ),
   

5. Create a new line below that and then duplicate the code above. This will add another field for your staff members. You’ll want to change the Optional Link URL to the name you’d like visible on the backend of your site. Change the The URL for your custom link. to the description you’d like to accompany it. Make sure not to use any single quotes ' in either of those. Lastly change the optional_url to the key you’d like to use for this. It should only have letters, numbers and underscores.
6. Repeat that for each new field you want to create and then save your changes. That should have the backend of your staff with new spots to add in your custom information.
7. Next edit the single-staff.php file. This file displays your individual staff members
8. Find the spot where you’d like to have your first bit of custom information displayed and paste this:

   You’ll want to change the to match the key you created earlier for that field. That will cause the custom information to be displayed if there is something in it on the backend. If it’s empty nothing will be displayed there.

   The middle line will display your content. You could add in HTML before the &?php and after the ?> if you’d like to or need to.

9. Repeat that for each filed you’d like to display and save your changes.
10. You’ll also need to open up the “layouts” folder and edit the staff-list.php file and make the appropriate changes there like you did to the single-staff.php. That file controls the list view of your staff members.

That should make it possible to add content to the front of your site from a new backend set of options. It will still need some styling applied to it and most likely some HTML too.

If I can help, let me know,
Bill

[Lara Marsh]

You Rock!!! THANKS SO MUCH. Worked perfectly.
Lara

[Bill Robbins]

Fantastic Lara. If you need anything else, just let me know.

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