Import Members

Not at this time.

I was working on an extension that would link members with user accounts, and allow importing users to members, or assigning existing members to user accounts, as well as some other features.

However, I got busy with some real work, and haven’t had the time to finish that one yet. Not sure when I’ll be able to get back to that.

In addition, you may want to explore other plugins that allow you to import CSV lists, or other formats, into custom post types. I know there are several plugins out there that state that they do this type of thing, but I haven’t personally tried any of them. Each member in the directory is a custom post type called “member”, so it shouldn’t be too hard to map the info to the appropriate fields if those plugins do what they say they do.

Lastly, if you have feature requests, such as this, I have started a new forum on my plugins site to help keep track of them all. Please submit ideas there, as this forum is really for support issues.

“got busy with some real work”? Good way to kill any interest in this plugin!
Who is going to spend hours typing in a member list?

@wla:
Yes… as in work that pays and feeds my family.

This plugin is free, and it’s open source, so feel free to jump right in and add your importer.

You didn’t purchase anything from me, and you’re not paying me for support or donating in any way to cover my time. What do I care if you download and use this free plugin or not. It’s something I created for my son’s PTA web site, with a small member directory, so we had nothing we needed to import, and this was the way I set the plugin up. If it doesn’t work for you, find something else or learn some PHP and create your own.

Everyone thinks they are entitled to my time for free just because I decided to offer some of my work for free to the WordPress community. I don’t owe you or anyone else anything.

You have some features you want me to consider, that’s fine. Post them in the feature request section of my site, and they will be considered.

Although I try my best to provide support and occasionally add new features, I can’t make everyone happy, and I have no obligation to do so. The beauty of Open Source is that anybody can contribute to any of this at any time, so feel free to take a crack at it!

Let me start with an apology! You are absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong, albeit a little frustrated.
You are right to point out that the beauty of Open Source is that you can add as much or as little as you are able or willing to do. It is up to others to take that any steps further.
I see the absence of a good Member Directory, perhaps based on Users (on which “Import From CSV” does a good job), as something that is much in need.
But, as you say, if it isn’t there, don’t blame others — do something about it! Perhaps I will try.
In any case, THANK YOU for providing an excellent plugin and, again, I apologize for expressing my frustrations in an inappropriate way.

Thanks… I appreciate the apology, and apologize if my reply was a bit more rude than intended. As a developer AND a musician, I get frustrated with too many people with the “free” or “entitled” mentality that expect everything to be given to them for free (music, art, plugins, themes, etc.). In addition, I get overwhelmed sometimes with the amount of “support” issues that are really just feature requests.

If you look through the support forums for my plugins here, on my own site, or have ever contacted me directly, you will see that I am always very quick to respond, and try to resolve every issue that is really an issue and not a feature request. I do also incorporate new features when I have the time.

However, the amount of feature requests has become too large, and there is simply no way I could incorporate all of them (especially not for free), and keep the size of the plugin manageable as far as code and without overwhelming the end user with too many confusing options.

I have realized, though, that I just have to be able to say “no” I can’t do that (at least not for free), and not worry about trying to make everyone happy. Of course, I can also learn to not be so rude about it! =)

Actually, I have realized that the problem is not knowing the exact names of the fields in the member custom post type. By trial and error, I have identified two as “_pta_member_directory_phone” and “_pta_member_directory_email”, but can’t figure out the names for Location and Position!

Position and Location are not custom meta fields, but rather Taxonomies for the “member” custom post type.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Taxonomies

The Position taxonomy is actually registered as “member_category”, since I thought of Positions as categories to display the members by. The Location taxonomy is “member_location”.

You will need an importer that can map position and location to terms for those taxonomies.