Build Value with a Member Offers Page

RYO Membership Directory Plugin Administrator Manual
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What if you could have a page on your website where vendors or members could advertise specials, either to visitors in general, or on a protected page for members only?

We think the "Member Offers" page is a neat opportunity to add value to your website for participants.

The Member Offers page consists of listings with short promotion copy plus an expanded page where the offer may be detailed. You get:

• Photo-style List: Alphabetical lists of companies offering specials to website guests.
• Search Field: This is a box where your website guest enters key words to search in the member records for members with special offers. This way it's fast to look up possible specials.

Setting Up a Member Offers List

We've made it very easy to set up a Member Offers Page.
The Yearbook is created with the [memberoffers] shortcode.

At its simplest, It's a three-step process.

Step 1: Create a Page and just enter this shortcode:

[memberoffers]

This will display the members with our yearbook style format.

Step 2: Go to Settings and add Labels for the Member Offers fields ts5 and ts6. We recommend something like this:

Text-Select Field #ts5: Member Offer<br>Vendors Only: If you have a special offer for our members, write your advertising copy in full here.
Text-Select Field #ts6: Member Offer Promo Copy<br>Vendors Only: If you entered a special offer above, add a short promo ad for the basic listing. 35 words or less.

Be sure to check the box by Text-Select Field #ts6 to trim the text to 35 words.

Customizations

The page is usually set up to show all members, but you can customize it to show only members in certain membership levels. Results will be included only if the member has entered information in the special member offer field (ts5).

You can change any of the layout using the attributes below.

Search Results

Users can search the database and search results are created automatically after scanning the database for matching records.

Website guests who want to view the complete ad can click on the business name and the full ad page is presented.

Note: In Settings, Templates you can customize the templates used for Search Results and for the member Detail Page. Alternate templates are provided so you can display one set of information in general member searches and another set of information in specialized directory searches.

Attributes to customize Member Offers Pages

You may modify these displays somewhat by specifying special attributes within the [memberoffers] notation, as in :

[memberoffers attribute1=value attribute2="Value of more than one word"]

Note that if you're assigning more than one word as a value, the value must be enclosed in quotation marks.

Each directory has three separate "views" which you control:

1. The "Directory View" is the initial page seen by a guest. It's either a list of members or a list of categories that can be clicked to search for members who have selected that category. For the Member Offers style directory, it's usually a list of members, though large organizations with lots of member offers might want this to be a classified style listing and start with a list of categories.
2. The "Search View" is the list of members seen after a search request, either a keyword request or a category click.
3. The "Detail View" is the detailed information displayed about a single member after clicking that members listing in a directory list or search results list.

As far as WordPress is concerned this all happens on one Page. In practice, that one Page shows a lot of different information.

Use these attributes to customize your Directory:

None of these need to be used unless you want to change the way your directory is put together. The standard directory is already set up in the software.

• membertypes: This is a list of member types to include in this page. You may include multiple types by listing them with a comma separating them and enclosing the list in quotation marks. If you don't set this, all member types are included.
• sortby: This must be either company or name or firstname -- lower case as shown. Results will be sorted in the respective order.
• format: This attribute indicates whether a Search Field and will be included on your Directory Page. SD = Search Field included. D = No Search Field. Large organizations with a large number of members making member offers might want to make this a classified style listing, starting with a category search. In that case, use SC for the format and set up a category list for selection.
• top: Set this to change the text that appears at the top of the page.

Appearance of the Directory View when you're starting with a list of members:

• directoryview: Set this to the name of the list template you want to display each member record in the initial directory listing. Typically searchtemplate3 which can be customized to show field ts6 with a short 35-word ad for the offer instead of the typical search promo text.
• index: Set this to 1 to display an alphabetical index at the top of the page with the first letters of entries on that page. These can be clicked to jump directly to that portion of the list. Set this to 0 for no index. If you are displaying a lot of entries on the page, you may want to repeat the index every 40 or 50 entries. If so, set this to the number of entries to display before repeating.
• perpage: Set this to the number of entries you want to display per page for the initial directory listing.
• require: This attribute limits the listing to records which have an entry of any kind in the designated Text-Selection field. Since you're probably having them list their offer in Text-Select field ts5, this is already set to ts5.

Appearance of the Directory View if starting with an offers Category List:

• categoryhead: This text will appear at the top of your Category List.
• categories: Use this attribute to direct the system to the category list you want displayed. Do this by naming the Text-Selection field which corresponds to the Choices list you want to use, probably ts7. (Be sure you've set up a list of categories for this field in Settings, Choices.)
• returnlink: This text will appear at the end of search results as a link back to the Main page with Category listing.

If you're including a Search Box:

• searchhead: This text will appear over the Search entry box.

Appearance of the Search View:

• searchview: Set this to the name of the list template you want to display the each record when a search has been initiated. This might be the same as directoryview, but we like to use a larger template with more information, since search results are typically smaller than the whole membership. Typically listtemplate7
• resultsinstructions: This text will appear over the search results after a report indicating how many results were obtained.
• searchindex: Set this to 1 to display an alphabetical index at the top of the page with the first letters of entries on that page. These can be clicked to jump directly to that portion of the list. Set this to 0 for no index. If you are displaying a lot of entries on the page, you may want to repeat the index every 40 or 50 entries. If so, set this to the number of entries to display before repeating.
• searchperpage: Set this to the number of entries you want to display per page for search results.
• returnlink: This text will appear at the end of search results as a link back to the Main page.
• searchrequire: This attribute limits Search Field searches to records which have an entry of any kind in the designated Text-Selection field. This applies to Search Field searches only, not to Category List searches. Since you're probably having them list their offer in Text-Select field ts5, this is already set to ts5.

Appearance of the Detail View, a Member's Detail Page:

• detailview: Set this to the name of the detail template you want to display the full member profile when someone clicks on a directory listing. Typically detailtemplate3 which shows the details of the offer by displaying ts5 instead of profile as in the standard member directory.

Here's an example. Note that you only need to set the attributes you want to change.

[memberoffers
sortby=company
top="Enter the keyword you want and click the 'Search' button to search offers."]

Here's another example.

[memberoffers
returnlink="Back to full list of ads"
resultsinstructions="Click on the company name to see full ad."]

Template Layouts for Profile Display:

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