Category Search Pages

RYO Membership Directory Plugin Administrator Manual
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This is how you set up a page to search for a member by keywords or by clicking on a Category, Activities, or Interests link.

Category Search Pages consist of the following two elements:

• Search Field: This is a box where your website guest enters key words to search in the member records.
• Category List: This is a list of topics or categories that is displayed. When your website guest clicks on a category, members are displayed who have selected that category in their profile.

You may create a page with both Search Field and Category List, or with Category List only, or with Search Field only.

Setting Up Your Category Search Page

The Category Search Page is created with the [categorysearch] shortcode.

At its simplest, you can create a Page and just enter this:

[categorysearch]

You'll also want to set up a list of categories. To do that:

1. Go to Settings and enter a Label for Text-Select Field ts1.
2. Go to Settings, Choices, select the file by the name you just gave field ts1, and enter choices, one per line.

This will display the Category Search listing with our standard format. You may modify that somewhat by specifying special attributes within the [categorysearch] notation, as in :

[categorysearch 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.

Search Results

Your search results are created automatically after scanning the database for matching records.

Results are displayed in a column including an image, if any, and basic information about the member.

Website guests who want to view the complete profile can click on the member name and a full profile page is presented.

Attributes to Customize Category Search Pages

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 Category Search directory, it's 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/or a Category List will be included on your Directory Page. SC for Search Field and Category List included. S for Search Field only. C for Category List only.
• top: Set this to change the text that appears at the top of the page.

Appearance of the Directory View, including a Category List (for categories, topics, or special interests):

• 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. Since you've probably set up your categories in ts1, that field is set by the system as standard.

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 listtemplate4
• 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 with Category listing.
• 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. This is automatically set to ts1 since that's probably the field you're using, but you can reset if needed. Or, set searchrequire='' if you want all records searched (including members who have not picked a category).

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 detailtemplate1

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

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

Template Layouts for Profile Display:

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