Searchable database of members using multiple criteria / filters

Question

I'm very new to wp let's say that first!

What I need is to create a site which will list a database of members of an organisation. Users will also be able to sign-up and add themselves to the database.

But additionally I want users to be able to search for other users using given criteria check boxes, for example:

Is male [ ] Is female [ ] Lives in city x [ ] Lives in city y [ ] Lives in city z [ ] Is aged 20-30 [ ] Is aged 30-40 [ ] Is aged 40-50 [ ]

(These arent the criteria I want to use but just examples by the way)

I checked out 'Participants Database' plug-in which looks excellent, all up to the part that I want the search to do the above filtering which it isn't clear how to achieve.

So, what is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

I just had the same problem, and solved it using the Participants Database plugin. The pdb_list shortcode supports filters, e.g. [pdb_list filter='state=NY'].

You can generate any shortcodes from a PHP script by running a script with the do_shortcode() function, like this:

echo do_shortcode('[pdb_list filter='state=NY']');

Now you have all the building blocks you need to generate the list server-side. Check out this article for more details.