WordPress Site Members and their Metadata
Keeping track of your members and their details is crucial for managing your site effectively. By listing your members, you can see who is involved and how they interact with your site. This is particularly useful for membership sites, forums, or any platform where user information is important. In this article, we’ll guide you on how to list your members and delve into their additional details, or metadata, such as user roles and activity.
Let’s explore how to manage and display user metadata.
User Metadata
An important aspect of listing the WordPress site members is to manage metadata, which provides additional information about each member. Metadata describes and organizes data, making it easier to find and work with. For example, just like a library catalog helps locate books by listing details such as title and author, metadata on your site can include user roles, activity, and other attributes. This makes it easier to filter and search through member information.
Metadata is a set of data that provides information about other data. The term “meta” in this context means an underlying description or definition. Essentially, metadata gives details about the primary data, making it easier to locate and work with that information.
Displaying User Metadata
In ProfileGrid, user metadata is managed through the Custom Fields feature. These Custom Fields store data about registered users as user meta, allowing you to retrieve and use this information later.
Now, let’s dive into how you can list your WordPress users and their metadata using ProfileGrid.
Adding Custom Fields to Create Registration Forms
Click on the ProfileGrid menu to access the Group Manager page. Here, click on the “Add New” link in the top left corner to create new groups. These groups will allow you to start adding new users to your site.
On the Group Card of each group, there are two links – Settings and Fields. Click on the Fields link. A pop-up will appear with all the custom fields. Select the fields and create a registration form.
Example of a single page registration form is given below.
You can also display multi-page registration form in WordPress with ProfileGrid.
As mentioned earlier, the fields added to your form, excluding the password, become part of your WordPress user meta. This means you can now list your WordPress users and their metadata on your site.
To display users and their metadata on the frontend, ProfileGrid provides two options:
- Search Page – Displays users from all groups on your site.
- Group Page – Shows users from specific groups on your site.
Creating a Search Page
On the shortcode page, copy the shortcode below to create the All Users Page.
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[profilegrid_users]
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Paste this shortcode into a new WordPress page, as the All Users Page is not a default ProfileGrid page. Publish the page to make it visible on the frontend.
Here’s a front-end view of the All Users Page. You’ll notice an Advanced Search option that includes Custom Fields to help filter your search. For instance, if you select the Facebook URL checkbox, the page will display only users who have provided their Facebook URL in their registration forms. You can also reset your search to choose different fields if needed.
Creating a Group Page
Similarly, copy the Single Group Page shortcode.
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[profilegrid_group gid=”x”]
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Paste the shortcode into the default Group Page, replacing the “x” with the group ID for each specific group to create their individual pages. Then, publish the page.
To make the default ProfileGrid pages visible on the frontend, assign them accordingly. Go to the Global Settings menu and click on the General link. You’ll see all the default pages listed there. From the drop-down menu next to Group Page, select the newly created group page, and then click the Save button.
Assigning a default page ensures it appears in your site menu.
Next, visit the front end of your site and select your Group Page.
In the example above, you can see a Group Page listing users. By selecting a user, you can view their profile.
Wasn’t that a simple and effective way to list your WordPress users and their metadata?
WordPress User MetaData
WordPress offers its default user metadata listing. You can find it from the Users menu on your WordPress dashboard.
However, the default WordPress registration form doesn’t include custom fields. As a result, the default user meta will only contain basic information like usernames and email addresses, and you won’t be able to display additional details on the frontend.
Summary
In this article, we covered how to list WordPress users and their metadata using ProfileGrid. By adding custom fields and using shortcodes, you can create pages that show detailed user information and filter searches based on metadata. This approach helps in displaying and managing user data efficiently on your site. Try it out and let us know how it goes.
How do you change how many you can display on the Group page? It looks like it is currently set to 10. Is there a way to make more display?
Unfortunately, as of now, ProfileGrid do not have the feature to change no. of members displayed on the group page. However, we have made note of this requirement and will review it for possible inclusion in future release.
It is possible to order users by date of register or more recently added.
In the example of search page: you filter by metadate exist or not. But it is possible to filter by the value of that metadata. For example country: Argentina, Brazil, Chile?
I would like to create a unique registration form for all users and allow them to choose a group. Can I do that?
Hello Maco Acero,
As of now, ProfileGrid doesn’t provide a single form for registration to multiple groups.
Also, order by register date and filter by metadata value isn’t currently supported by ProfileGrid on the front-end search page.
However, we have added this to our requested features list and will include it a future version update. Once included, you will get an update via the plugin’s changelog.