Can Connections do this?

  • Resolved TxFig

    (@txfig)


    3 years, 5 months ago

    I had looked at Connections a few years ago for a different project, but when this new organizational website came around, I came back and looked again – it seems there are TONS of new things available that make this easier to use than last time (or maybe I just understand a few things better).

    Also, I’ve read a dozen or so other posts and have to say I am VERY impressed with how fast a person gets a response to questions asked here (usually by Steven). Really nice. I have the base Connections installed, but have not yet bought any templates or extensions (I’ll probably just get the “pro pack”). I’m hoping that some of my questions below are answered by “use this template or extension”. ??

    Ok, so on to my questions:

    1) I’m using Kadence as my theme. I haven’t seen any “gotchas” yet, but just wanted to ping to see if there is anything already known?

    Harder questions.
    The website is there to provide the public a list of people who can remove honey bees from places where people don’t want them. Therefore, the directory information is all public. We have 2 kinds of people who remove bees:

    * General hobbyist beekeepers who can remove simple problems such as swarms
    * Professional removers who can get bees out of the walls of homes, trees, equipment, etc.

    Question 2) I’m not sure of the best way to create the categories for our members. When we display the list of members to the public, we ask them to identify the kind of problem they are having (swarm or colony).
    When they look at the list of members, it should default to “colony” (the professional members only). But if the public person chooses “swarm”, then the directory needs to list ALL of the members.

    Right now I have 2 categories setup as “Everyone” and a sub-category under that of “Professionals”. Is that the right structure to use?

    Question 3) When a person joins our organization, we ask them 2 questions regarding their service area (our group is for the entire state of Texas, but nobody services the entire state). We ask them:
    * What counties do you service?
    * What is your HOME county?

    Question 3a) How do I create custom fields where I can upload the list of counties in the state (254 of them). For the first field, a person could (almost always will) have multiple counties listed. For the 2nd field, a person can have only 1.

    Question 3b) We give the public person viewing the list of members an option to narrow their search by telling us what county they are in. Obviously when they do that, they will only get our members who listed that county in that first field (the list). BUT, if a member lists that county as their “home county”, we want their listing to float to the top of the list.

    Question 4: keeping (3) above in mind, we want the order (sort) of members within a county to be random, so that no one member gets an advantage of being listed above other members simply based on the name of their company (or last name).

    Question 5: Obviously, up to now, nobody has needed to logon to the site. BUT, we would like to give our members the ability to logon to the site and update some of their own entry information. At a minimum, upload their picture, update their phone, email, & website addresses. Perhaps (undecided) their updates would have to be approved by a “moderator”.
    I’m not sure how to go about doing any of this stuff.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Steven

    (@shazahm1hotmailcom)

    RE: I’m using Kadence as my theme. I haven’t seen any “gotchas” yet, but just wanted to ping to see if there is anything already known?

    Kadence is actually the theme I presently have active on my Connections development/testing site. There are no issues that I have noticed. In general, Connections should play nicely with all themes. There are CSS conflicts that arise from time to time, but those are generally easily addressed.

    RE: I have 2 categories setup as “Everyone” and a sub-category under that of “Professionals”. Is that the right structure to use?

    I do not think you need the “Everyone” parent category. It sounds like you could have two top-level parent categories, “Hobbyist” and “Professional”. “Everyone” would be when the list is not filtered by a category.

    RE: How do I create custom fields where I can upload the list of counties in the state (254 of them). For the first field, a person could (almost always will) have multiple counties listed. For the 2nd field, a person can have only 1.

    I suggest creating a third top-level parent category named “Counties” and then import all 254 counties as children categories.

    This way, you can assign as many counties to an entry as needed. Using the advanced search beta that comes with (on request from the customer) with the Pro Pack, you could set up a multiple category search where a user could search for “Profesional” in selected Counties.

    There is also a Country field in the address fieldset; the new service provider can provide that as part of their address.

    RE: We give the public person viewing the list of members an option to narrow their search by telling us what county they are in. Obviously when they do that, they will only get our members who listed that county in that first field (the list). BUT, if a member lists that county as their “home county”, we want their listing to float to the top of the list.

    I can not really think of a way to make that happen. I think that being able to search by county; the user would choose only the county they are in to see the “local” results.

    RE: keeping (3) above in mind, we want the order (sort) of members within a county to be random, so that no one member gets an advantage of being listed above other members simply based on the name of their company (or last name).

    You can use the order_by='id|RANDOM' shortcode parameter to list the results randomly.

    Please see Example 3 on this doc page:

    There are a couple of important notes shown under the examples that you should review.

    Also, this should work as you need when applying category filters. Still, if you allow the user to perform keyword searches, the order will be determined by the database based on a score the database thinks is relevant. No randomization would be applied in this case.

    up to now, nobody has needed to logon to the site. BUT, we would like to give our members the ability to logon to the site and update some of their own entry information. At a minimum, upload their picture, update their phone, email, & website addresses. Perhaps (undecided) their updates would have to be approved by a “moderator”.
    I’m not sure how to go about doing any of this stuff.

    You would need at least the Link addon (comes as part of the Pro Pack). This allows a registered WP User to add and maintain their Entry with or without admin moderation.

    Optional, you might want the Form addon as well. This allows the WP User to add/edit their Entry from the frontend instead of on their WP User admin profile page.

    Connections does not handle/process the WP User registration. You can use a third-party plugin of your choosing to handle that function or use the feature built into WP for User registration. Connections will work with either.

    I hope that I have answered all your questions thoroughly!

    Thread Starter TxFig

    (@txfig)

    I hope that I have answered all your questions thoroughly!

    Spectacularly so!
    Other developers should take notes from you. ??

    `RE: We give the public person viewing the list of members an option to narrow their search by telling us what county they are in. Obviously when they do that, they will only get our members who listed that county in that first field (the list). BUT, if a member lists that county as their “home county”, we want their listing to float to the top of the list.

    <blockquote>I can not really think of a way to make that happen. I think that being able to search by county; the user would choose only the county they are in to see the “local” results.`

    I think I explained it badly.
    Yes, the customer/user would choose only the county they are in to see the local results.

    Let’s say we have 10 members who say they provide service to Brazos County, 3 of those 10 live in Brazos County and list it as their “home county” (the other 7 live in another county, but are willing to travel here in order to provide service).

    What I would like is for when a customer (who lives in Brazos County) selects this county, the 3 of us who live here are listed first, followed by the other 7.

    Before you mentioned doing the counties as a category. What if I had 2 categories with all of the counties – one for “home county” and the other for “service area”? When a user selects a county, could I get connections to do a search in both categories (listing home first, then service)?

    Plugin Author Steven

    (@shazahm1hotmailcom)

    RE: What I would like is for when a customer (who lives in Brazos County) selects this county, the 3 of us who live here are listed first, followed by the other 7.

    Sorry, but I can not think of a way to accomplish that type of search result order while also being random. Additional, the search query would be an operational AND, meaning if the customer chooses Professional and Brazos, the returned results would be Entries that are attached to both Professional AND Brazos categories.

    RE; What if I had 2 categories with all of the counties – one for “home county” and the other for “service area”? When a user selects a county, could I get connections to do a search in both categories (listing home first, then service)?

    You could set this up, but the search query would still be an operation AND, The results returned would have to be assigned to all three categories the customer selects.

    Here’s a link to a site that is using the advanced search beta:

    Perhaps that will give you a better feel for how the multiple category search will work.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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