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  3. People Directory

People Directory

The people directory allows site contributors to create profile pages for their staff, faculty, students, etc., and have those pages aggregate into a searchable directory.

Features include:

  • customizable affiliations (e.g., staff, faculty, student)
  • profile pages for each individual
  • directory entry fields to display information such as profile picture, name, preferred pronoun, contact information, and information about the user
  • a searchable directory to display an aggregated list of all profiles in either grid or table style. Visitors can search based on name or filter by affiliation (the filter will automatically be hidden if it's not used).

Important: Student information cannot be published unless the student has provided permission in writing to do so. For more information, visit the Access and Privacy Policy page on the Office of the University Registrar's site.

Example of the people directory (table)

Example of the people directory (grid)

Example of the people directory (paragraph)

Getting started with the people directory

The People Directory tool uses it's own content type, called the "People Directory Entry". To add a new directory entry, follow the instructions to create a "people directory entry" page, in the "Creating Pages" tutorial.

The people directory entry is just another content type, like basic pages, articles and events. Though the fields have been designed to capture profile information, the basic concepts of editing and maintaining directory entries is consistent with all other content in WebPublish.

For help maintaining your people directory content, visit our tutorials under Managing Content You can get started by learning how to edit and delete content.

The people directory entry content type allows you to tag your profiles with customized affiliations. These tags act as a way of grouping your directory entries and can help visitors to your site find people in the searchable people directory where all profiles are aggregated.

Before you can tag a directory entry, you need to add the affiliations to your site. You can do this by following the instructions for adding a term to a vocabulary in the our Taxonomy tutorial. Terms should be added to the People Directory Affiliation Categories vocabulary.

Once your terms have been added, they will appear automatically in the People Directory Affiliation Categories section of the page when editing existing and future people directory entry content.

All published directories will automatically display certain fields (e.g., profile picture, name, position, location, address, contact information, short description, if applied) on a searchable directory page. This page is different from other pages because it is generated using something called a View, meaning that it doesn't offer the same page moderation and menu linking options as a regular page.

To add a menu link to the searchable people directory to your site navigation:

  1. Navigate to Structure > Menus
  2. Select "Edit menu" for the Main navigation menu
  3. Click "Add link"
  4. Add a Menu link title (e.g., People Directory)
  5. In the Link field, add the following: /people (this is the relative alias of the directory page for all WebPublish 3.0 sites)
  6. Select a parent item from the Parent link drop-down, if you'd like the link to appear somewhere other than on the top-level navigation

In the URL Alias field, uncheck the box to Generate automatic URL alias (see Figure 1), and add /people-search for the table style directory or /people-grid for the grid style directory to the beginning of the URL alias for each entry. This will generate a breadcrumb that users can click on to get back to the main directory (see Figure 2).

[screenshot of URL alias interface]
Figure 1
screenshot of breadcrumb]
Figure 2

People directory entries will automatically appear on the searchable directory page when they are published. Likewise, they will be removed from the directory when they are unpublished, archived or deleted.

For help publishing / unpublishing your people directory entry, visit our Publishing/Unpublishing Content tutorial. For help deleting an entry, visit the Edit and Delete Content tutorial.

If there are specific profiles that you'd like to highlight on your people directory, you can use the entries promotion options to "pin" the profile to the top of the list. To do this: 

  1. Navigate to the individual people directory entry and click Edit
  2. In the right menu listing, select "Promotion Options"
  3. Choose "Sticky at top of lists"
  4. Save your page; in order for the change to be reflected on the people directory page, ensure the changes are published. 

Now, when viewing your people directory, the user's profile will appear at the top of the list. Red styling will be added along with the "pinned" star icon. 

If you have multiple profiles pinned, they will revert to the default sorting for the page (i.e., alphabetically, by Display Name)

Navigate to the Appearance menu, under the "WebPublish 3 Basic (default theme)" section choose Settings, then choose People Directory Settings. Check/uncheck the fields you would like displayed.