Making the Most of the Address List

The address list is the core feature of the Church Admin plugin – everything else is based off of who and what you have stored there.

The address list is based around households. For the Church Admin plugin, a household is defined as family unit based at a single address. But we would recommend you create a new household, even at the same address, when a teenager becomes an adult so that they have more control over their data. Every household or person you enter into Church Admin will appear on the address list, even if you have not added an address to their entry.

A household’s data includes address, landline telephone number, and geolocation data. If you have a Google Map’s API key set, then an exact map location can be saved. The Google map API key is not the simplest process. To learn about geolocation, see the help page Geolocation.

A household is like a folder to store within it a family. In Settings, you can choose which optional fields, like middle name, nick name or prefix (e.g. van der), you would like to include in the person entry form.

There is a shortcode that allows people to register or edit their entry:

You can more extensively edit people in the backend – adding ministries, small group involvement and so on.

You can show the address list on a post or page using the shortcode:

You have lots of options

By default, the address list is only shown to logged in users. You can modify the address list display by adding “arguments” to the end of the address list shortcode, within the brackets.

loggedin=0 makes the address list visible to all, not only logged in users.
Adding photo=1 shows any household or individual photos uploaded.
Adding map=1 shows the household on a map.
Adding updateable=1 allows a logged in user to edit their own entry.

If you have entered people into the directory, they now need user accounts so that they can freely use your website and edit they information. To learn how to do that, see; Adding a WP User to a Person in Your Directory.

Is the personal data secure or searchable? It is not stored in a way that the WordPress search can find it! Nor can Google if you have made the pages with shortcodes “logged in only” as is the default.

ADDRESS LIST FILTERING:

One of the features of the Church Admin plugin, is the ability to filter the address list down to what you want to see.

You can get to the address list filtering by clicking on People. Click the boxes, for the filters you want to apply. If you have people in your directory, next to each filter option is a number which represents how many people fit that category. At the bottom of the page, the filter results will display in a list. At the top of the list there is a button to Download result for if you’d like to download the filter results.

The directory is a great tool for contacting your members and allowing them to register for clases, small groups, and even volunteer online to help in ministries.