Tag: WordPress Plugin Staff Directory

You have no doubt heard that people often tend to buy from people they already know, like and trust.

If you are looking for quicker and easier ways to sell more products or services online and get people to interact more on your site, then make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust your organization better.

Adding a directory of employees to your website can help to generate greater trust, boost your online credibility and get interested prospects buying from your site.

This tutorial explains how to create a simple and easy-to-maintain directory of staff members in your WordPress site.

Adding A Staff List Directory In WordPress

In this tutorial, we will install, activate and configure a free WordPress plugin called Simple Staff List.

Simple Staff List

(Simple Staff List Plugin For WordPress)

The Simple Staff List plugin is free and lets you easily display information about your staff members on your site.

First, let’s install and activate this plugin.

Log into the administration and navigate to Plugins > Add New …

(WP Plugins Menu – Add New)

In the Plugins panel, search for “simple staff plugin”. This will bring up the Simple Staff Plugin in your plugin search results.

Click on the Install Now button …

(WordPress Plugins  – Add Plugins screen)

Click on Activate Plugin …

(Activate plugin)

After the plugin has been installed and activated, you will notice that new entry will show up in the WordPress admin menu called Staff Members …

(Staff Members)

All of the options and settings for the Simple Staff List plugin are configured and managed in the Staff Members menu.

Configuring The Plugin

Depending on the size of your business and how you want to structure your directory, you could start to add new staff details after installing the plugin, or create different groups (i.e. categories) to place yourstaff members into.

Staff Members – Groups

To set up your directory categories go to your WP dashboard menu and choose Staff Members > Groups …

(Staff Members – Groups)

The Groups settings …

(Groups settings screen)

Note: Setting up groups is very similar to working with WordPress categories …

(Groups work like WordPress categories)

Add a new group by entering the following information:

1. Group Name – Type in your group category name
2. Slug – Enter the slug of your category name. Note: make sure that all letters are in lower case and use hyphens instead of spaces.
3. Parent – Use this section if you plan to set up a directory hierarchy
4. Description – Enter a category description in this field (optional)
5. Click Add New Group when finished to create the new category …

(Groups settings screen)

If you run a larger organization, being able to set up different categories can be very useful. For example, you can create categories for investors, project teams, faculties, etc.

Create as many categories and nested groups as you want by adding new Groups and then using the Parent drop-down menu to build a hierarchical structure …

(Nested groups)

Remember to click the Add New Group button after creating each new item …

To edit or reassign Groups for a particular item, hover over a category title and select the Edit link …

The category open in the Edit Group screen. Select a new parent category from the Parent drop-down menu …

(Edit Group screen)

Click the Update button to save your changes …

To edit the Group name or slug, hover over the group name and choose Quick Edit …

Click on Update Group  when done to save your changes …

Continue adding group names to this section until you are done creating your directory structure …

You can add as many nested groups as you like …

(Nested groups)

Once you are done setting up your groups, you can start to add staff details to your directory.

Staff Members – Add New

In your WordPress admin menu, select Staff Members > Add New …

(Staff Members Menu – Add New)

This loads the Add New Staff Member screen in your web browser …

(Add New Staff Member settings)

This screen provides an easy-to-use interface for adding your staff member details and includes the following fields:

Name Section (1)

• Name: Enter the staff member’s name
• Permalink: You can edit each employees’ permalink URL (you will see this section after saving your details).

Staff Photo Section (2)

• Photo: Upload a photo here

Staff Member Info Section (3)

• Position: Enter the employee’s role
• Email: Type in the person’s email here
• Phone Number: Type the person’s phone number here
• Facebook URL: Add your company’s Facebook URL (note: use the full URL, e.g. http://www.facebook.com/username)
• Twitter URL: Add your company’s Twitter username (note: only enter the username, not the full twitter URL)

Staff Member Bio Section (4)

• Staff Member Bio: Type a profile description for your employee or faculty member here. As this uses the default WordPress Text Editor, you can format content in this section.

Groups Section (5)

• Groups: Assign an employee or team member to a specific group (see the previous section to learn how to set up your groups).

If you click on the Screen Options tab …

(Screen options)

You can enable additional page settings …

(Enable additional fields in screen options tab)

Now that you know what each section does, enter each employee’s details …

(Staff directory fields)

After you are done entering details, assign your entry to a directory group in the Groups feature located in your sidebar …

(Groups box)

Note: If you did not set up categories before starting to add new staff members, you can create a new group by clicking on Groups > + Add New Group …

(Groups - + Add New Group feature)

A field for entering your group name will appear, with a drop-down menu to assign your new entry to a parent group. Type in the name of your new group and click on Add New Group …

The new category will be added. Remember to tick the checkbox to assign your staff member to the group …

(New group added in Groups box)

Note: You cannot edit groups when adding or making changes to new employee details. To edit an item, go to the Groups section of the plugin’s settings (see “Groups” section of the tutorial above for details).

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After entering your staff or team member’s details, click the Publish button to add them to your employee directory …

Click View Post …

You can make changes to your member profile by clicking the Edit Staff Member link in the WP admin toolbar …

(Edit Staff Member link – admin toolbar)

If you need help using the admin toolbar, refer to this tutorial:

• Your WordPress Dashboard – A Tutorial

Note: If ’page not found’ errors shows up like the one shown in the screenshot below, check that your permalinks have been set up correctly …

(Check your permalinks if you get ’not found’ page errors)

To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here:

• Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs

Keep adding new entries to your staff directory directory until done.

Staff Members – All Staff Members

After entering staff members to your directory, you can view and edit details by choosing Staff Members > All Staff Members on the menu …

(Staff Members – All Staff Members)

This brings up a list of all the employees and their details …

(Staff Members details)

If you need to make changes to individual details, simply hover your mouse over their name, and a menu will appear.

Click on Edit to make changes to their Staff Bio, or Quick Edit to update details such as their name, slug, group, and publish status. You can also remove a member from the staff directory by clicking on the Trash link, or view the entry on your site by clicking on View …

(Editing Staff Members details)

Depending on what you are using the plugin for, your list can grow quite large.

Use the Search Staff Members search feature to find member details …

(Search members)

The plugin also lets you specify which fields can display in this section. To hide or hide fields on your screen, click the Screen Options tab …

(Screen Options tab)

Tick or untick the checkboxes to display or hide specific fields. You can also specify how many staff members are listed per page. Click Apply when finished to save your screen options …

Staff Members – Order

The Simple Staff List plugin also features a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to specify the order in which your employees show on your directory pages.

Choose Staff Members > Order on your WordPress admin menu …

(Staff Members Menu – Order)

To rearrange the order of your entries, click and drag the item to its desired position …

(Rearrange items using drag and drop)

Your staff list will automatically be reordered …

(Reordered listings)

Once you have added all of your members’ listing details to the directory, the next step is to make the directory display to your site users.

Staff Members – Order

The plugin also features a drag-and-drop interface allowing you to specify the order that listings display on your directory page.

Select Staff Members > Order in the dashboard menu …

(Staff Members Menu – Order)

To reorder your listings, click and drag the entry to its new location …

(Rearrange listings using drag and drop)

Your directory will automatically be reordered …

(Reordered list items)

Once you have added all of your employees’ listing details to your directory, the next step is to make the directory show on your site.

Simple Staff List – Additional Notes

The Simple Staff List plugin lets you customize the layout and style of your staff list items using template tags and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Templates Menu

To customize the style and layout of your staff directory, select Staff Members > Templates from your main admin menu …

(Staff Members – Templates)

This opens the Templates screen …

(Customize your directory template)

To customize your directory listings, insert any of the allowable template tags inside the [staff_loop] [/staff_loop] code.

For example, below is a screenshot of the default template used for displaying directory listings …

(Default Plugin Staff Loop Template)

The The code shown above will display your listing as shown below …

(Default Staff Loop Template Listing)

Notice that no Facebook or Twitter URLs are showing in the above listing. To display these fields, you will need to add the [staff-facebook] and [staff-twitter] tags to the template loop, as shown in the example below …

(Template tags can be added to Staff Loop Template)

Here is what your staff list will now look like …

(Directory with social media URLs added)

Note: If you want to customize your directory but don’t want to mess around with code or are unsure of how to edit the template as shown above, please contact us for help.

Usage Menu

As well as allowing you to customize your directory templates, the Simple Staff List plugin allows you to display your listings differently using modified shortcodes.

In your menu, choose Staff Members >Usage …

(Staff Members Menu – Usage)

This opens the Usage screen …

(Simple Staff List – Usage shortcode variations)

This screen displays all different shortcode variations that the plugin allows you to use.

For example, a useful shortcode variation you can insert in your page to display only members belonging a specific group is the shortcode [simple-staff-list group=”group name”], (e.g.:[simple-staff-list group=”sales reps”])

You can also display listings in ascending or descending order by inserting the shortcode [simple-staff-list order=”DESC”] (descending).

Options Menu

Click Staff Members >Options in the WordPress admin menu …

(Staff Members – Options)

This opens the Options screen …

(Simple Staff List – Options settings)

Here you can change some of the labels used in the plugin

Finally, you can also export your staff members data by going to your WP admin menu and clicking Tools > Export …

(Export Staff Members info)

If you need plugin help or support, visit the Simple Staff List faq page.

Additional Staff Directory Plugins

Simple Staff List isn’t the only adding a directory of your team members in WordPress. For example, here are a few other free plugins you can use for adding a staff directory on your site:

Modern Team Staff Directory

(Modern Team Staff Directory – WordPress Staff Directory Plugin)

This plugin helps you collect your team information and showcase it anywhere on your site in beautiful grids, columns and tables. This premium plugin features over a dozen presets and provides editors that make it easy to edit and update your directory.

(Modern Team Staff Directory – Responsive Templates)

Learn more about this plugin here:

• Modern Team Staff Directory – WP Staff Directory Plugin

Staff Directory

(Staff Directory – WP Staff Directory Plugin)

With the Staff Directory plugin, you can easily create a directory of faculty/team/staff members. The plugin supports staff categories and can be used for companies, schools, etc.

You can also set up custom fields …

(Custom Details Fields. Screenshot sourced from Staff Directory plugin website)

Learn more here:

• Staff Directory

Faculty And Staff Directory

(Faculty And Staff Directory – Plugin For WordPress)

The Faculty And Staff Directory plugin was developed to provide a simple and flexible faculty and staff directory for a small college, school or university.

The plugin also installs a widget that allows you to feature a profile in a widget area.

For more details go here:

• Faculty And Staff Directory

Company Directory

(Company Directory)

Company Directory lets you easily add your employees to your site. Different layouts are included, including grid and single views, plus as fields like job title, email address, phone number, image and member bio, allowing visitors to get to know your company and capabilities.

Visitors will be able to click through from your list, grid, and table views to read more about each staff member in a customizable single view …

(Display your staff and faculty members in an easy-to-view format. Screenshot sourced from Company Directory website)

This plugin also uses a simple shortcode system.

Learn more about this plugin here:

• Company Directory – WP Staff Directory Plugin

Employee Spotlight

(Employee Spotlight)

Employee Spotlight displays employees, partners or just one single person in a 4-column circle grid page. This page can be easily created with a setup assistant on plugin activation.

The Employee Spotlight pluginincludes two sidebar widgets which display featured and recent employees, and two responsive views which adjust to the viewer’s screen.

Detailed information about  each staff member can be displayed in their own page, as well as in summary …

(Responsive layout with circle grid. Screenshot sourced from Employee Spotlight plugin website)

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Employee Spotlight

Staffer

(Staffer – WordPress Staff Directory Plugin)

Staffer uses custom post types for employee management and supports the display of staff members via a shortcode, allowing you to easily create and manage an onsite staff directory …

(Staffer archive page. Screenshot sourced from plugin website)

Staffer works immediately with almost all WordPress themes, and also allows for custom template use and custom content wrappers.

More info:

• Staffer – WordPress Staff Directory Plugin

If the above plugins aren’t what you’re looking for, search the WordPress plugin directory or go online and search for:

• Add Staff Directory To WordPress
• WordPress Staff List
• Staff Directory WordPress Plugin
• Employee Directory WordPress
• etc.

Hopefully, now you know how to easily add a list directory of staff members to in WordPress using a free WP plugin.

Images of models used to depict fictitious staff members were sourced under creative commons license from pixabay.com

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