Custom post type for ‘staff’ versus using wordpress user profiles?

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A scenario I keep coming across is where an organisation might have several staff for whom I want to have some sort of listing and a single profile page with biographical information.

Typically I would create a custom post type for staff and maybe a custom taxonomy if needed.

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But now I’m wondering if it might not be optimal to use the built-in “user” post type in WordPress. I realise I can customise the user profile fields, display user listings, single profiles etc Custom taxonomies are possible too I believe.

Is there a best practice here?

I have a case now where all staff are also writing blog posts under their own name and so have a user account anyway and it crossed my mind that maybe I’m better off just fleshing out their user profiles and working with author.php instead of using the custom post type of ‘staff’.

For now I’ve been going with the CPT and using Posts 2 Posts plugin to associate their “staff” post with their “user” account and thereby create listings of their blog posts on their single staff page.

Any thoughts on how best to implement this in wordpress is appreciated.

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  1. If people you want to show publicly on a site are users, i.e. have an account and write posts, in my opinion it’s much better to use the WordPress user functionality: all the information you would put in a CPT can also be put in user metadata, and creating users is mandatory (they have to login), while creating a CPT can be avoided and, for me, is redundant.

    However, I know that using a CPT can be simpler, for some reasons:

    1. Default profile page on WP admin has little information.
    2. In WP there is no public profile page at all: author.php is not a profile page.
    3. In addition to the profile page, you probably want to loop through staff, and of course you can use WP_User_Query to do this, but isolating staff from users that must be hidden can be a little hard: there is no user taxonomy and using user roles can generate problems if you want to assign the public role to any user that must not be publicly visible.

    Luckily these problems are not real problems and can be solved easily. The workflow I suggest is:

    1. Create a new user role. You can clone capabilities from a standard role, but creating a role, and isolating staff from other users, will be super-easy.
    2. Add custom fields for user profiles, and put all the information you want.
    3. Create a page template that will handle the user loop and the user profile. How? Look at point 4.
    4. Create a rewrite endpoint. In this way a URL like example.com/staff will call a page (the one you assign the template created on 3.) and a URL like example.com/staff/user/nickname will call the same page, but pass the query var user with value nickname that you can use in the page to show the user profile.

    1., 2. and 4. can be easily done in a plugin. I will give you the bones of this plugin, that should be improved:

    <?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: Staff Plugin
 * Description: Test
 * Author: G.M.
*/

/**
* Add a new role cloning capabilities from editor and flush rewrite rules
*/
function install_staff_plugin() {
    $editor = get_role( 'editor' );
    add_role( 'staff', 'Staff', $editor->capabilities );
    staff_plugin_endpoint();
    flush_rewrite_rules();
}

/**
* Remove the role and flush rewrite rules
*/
function unistall_staff_plugin() {
    remove_role( 'staff' );
    flush_rewrite_rules();
}

/**
* Add the endpoint
*/
function staff_plugin_endpoint() {
    add_rewrite_endpoint( 'user', EP_PAGES );
}

/**
* Add custom field to profile page
*/
function staff_plugin_profile_fields( $user ) {
    $fields = array(
        'facebook' => __('Facebook'),
        'twitter'  => __('Twitter'),
        'photo_id' => __('Photo ID (use attachment id)')
    );
    echo '<h3>' . __('Staff Information') . '</h3>';
    echo '<table class="form-table">';
    foreach ( $fields as $field => $label ) {
        $now = get_user_meta( $user->ID, $field, true ) ? : "";
        printf( '<tr><th><label for="%s">%s</label></th>',
            esc_attr($field), esc_html($label) );
        printf( '<td><input type="text" name="%s" id="%s" value="%s" class="regular-text" /><br /></td></tr>', 
            esc_attr($field), esc_attr($field), esc_attr($now) );
    }
    echo '</table>';
}

/**
* Save the custom fields
*/
function staff_plugin_profile_fields_save( $user_id ) {
    if ( ! current_user_can( 'edit_user', $user_id ) ) return;
    $fields = array( 'facebook', 'twitter', 'photo_id' );
    foreach ( $fields as $field ) {
        if ( isset( $_POST[$field] ) ) 
            update_user_meta( $user_id, $field, $_POST[$field] );
    }
}

add_action( 'init', 'staff_plugin_endpoint' );
add_action( 'show_user_profile', 'staff_plugin_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile', 'staff_plugin_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'personal_options_update', 'staff_plugin_profile_fields_save' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile_update', 'staff_plugin_profile_fields_save' );
register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'install_staff_plugin' );
register_deactivation_hook( __FILE__, 'unistall_staff_plugin' );

    The plugin does exactly what I said. Regarding adding custom fields for user profiles, as an example, I added just 3 fields. One of them is intended to be used for a user image and accepts the ID of an attachment. Of course in the real world it’s better to call the media uploader and let the user choose to upload an image, but this is not in the scope of this answer…

    After the plugin is saved and activated, we have to create the page template, create a page, and assign that template. Again, I will post here a proof of concept for the template:

    <?php
/**
 * Template Name: Staff Page
*
*/

get_header(); ?>

<div id="primary" class="content-area">
<div id="content" class="site-content" role="main">

<?php
/* The page content */
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
    $page_link = get_permalink();
    the_content();
endwhile;

$required_user = get_query_var( 'user' );

$wanted_meta = array(
    'first_name', // This is a standard meta
    'facebook',   // This is an example of custom meta
    'twitter'     // This is another example of custom meta
);

if ( empty( $required_user ) ) {

    /* The Users Loop */

    // Customize the args as you need
    $args = array (
        'role'    => 'Staff',
        'orderby' => 'post_count',
        'order'   => 'DESC',
        'fields'  => 'all'
    );
    $user_query = new WP_User_Query( $args );
    if ( ! empty( $user_query->results ) ) { 
        foreach ( $user_query->results as $user ) {
            $profile_url = trailingslashit($page_link) . 'user/' . $user->user_nicename;
            // This gets ALL the meta fields as a 2 dimensional array (array of arrays)
            $meta_fields = get_user_meta( $user->ID ); 
            ?>
            <div id="user-<?php echo $user->ID ?>">
            <?php
            // An example of custom meta where to save the id of an attachment
            if ( isset($meta_fields['photo_id'][0]) && ! empty($meta_fields['photo_id'][0]) ) {
                echo '<a href="' . esc_url($profile_url) . '/">';
                echo wp_get_attachment_image( $meta_fields['photo_id'][0], 'medium' );
                echo '</a>';
            }
            ?>
            <h2><?php echo '<p><a href="' .esc_url( $profile_url ) . '/">' . 
                $user->display_name . '</a></p>';?></h2>
            <p><?php echo $meta_fields['description'][0]; ?></p>
            <ul>
            <?php
            foreach ( $wanted_meta as $key ) { 
                if ( isset($meta_fields[$key][0]) && ! empty($meta_fields[$key][0]) ) {
                    ?>
                    <li><?php echo $meta_fields[$key][0]; ?></li>
                <?php } 
            } ?>
            </ul>
            </div>
            <?php
        }
    }

} else {

    /* One User Requested */

    $user = get_user_by( 'slug', $required_user );
    if ( $user ) {
        ?>
        <div id="user-<?php echo $user->ID ?>">
        <?php
        $meta_fields = get_user_meta( $user->ID );
        if ( isset( $meta_fields['photo_id'][0] ) && ! empty( $meta_fields['photo_id'][0] ) ) {
            echo wp_get_attachment_image( $meta_fields['photo_id'][0], 'full' );
        }
        ?>
        <h1><?php echo '<p>' . $user->display_name . '</p>';?></h1>
        <p><?php echo $meta_fields['description'][0]; ?></p>
        <p>
            <a href="<?php echo get_author_posts_url($user->ID); ?>"><?php 
                printf(__('See all posts by %s'), $user->display_name); ?></a> | 
            <a href="<?php echo $page_link; ?>"><?php _e('Back to Staff'); ?></a>
        </p>
        <ul>
        <?php
        foreach ( $wanted_meta as $key ) {
            if ( isset( $meta_fields[$key][0] ) && ! empty( $meta_fields[$key][0] ) ) {
                ?>
                <li><?php echo $meta_fields[$key][0]; ?></li>
                <?php 
            } 
        } ?>
        </ul>
        </div>
        <?php
    }
}
?>

</div><!-- #content -->
</div><!-- #primary -->

<?php get_footer(); ?>

    Now create a page and assign this template. Then assign the user role ‘staff’ to your staff and fill the profiles.

    As a final touch, in your author.php you can add, probably in the header, something like this:

    <div class="author-info">
    <?php
    $curauth = ( get_query_var( 'author_name' ) ) ? 
        get_user_by( 'slug', get_query_var( 'author_name' ) ) : 
        get_userdata( get_query_var( 'author' ) );
    $photo = get_user_meta( $curauth->ID, 'photo_id', true );
    if ( $photo ) echo wp_get_attachment_image( $photo, 'medium' );
    ?>
    <h2><?php echo $curauth->display_name; ?></h2>
    <h3><em><?php echo $curauth->user_description; ?></em></h3>
</div>

    That’s all. Test it, improve it and have fun with it.

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