WP4Labs

• Use WordPress 3.1 – Older Versions will cause trouble

WP4Labs is a small Plugin, wich provides some functions to manange a lab or a scientific group. I designed it for the websites of two Biolabs. It’s far away from being my first WP-Plugin, but it’s the first one I want to publish. I tested it in four or five WP-installtions on dofferent servers, and it seems to all OK.

It provides the following parts:
– An advanced User Profile, containing some fields for academic career dates
– in connection with that a connection to the ariw.org-database of scientific institutions wordl wide, to make it easer finding a specific institution and it’s URL
– the possibility to manage users in academic groups, such as Alumni, Post-Doc, P.I. and such (customizable)
– a local-avatar function which maintains the possibility for users to use a Gravatar (maybe someday I should take this one out and make a own plugin out of it)
– a post-type called ‘project’, to which you can connect users to (scientific) groups. Only users with P.I.-status (for being leader of the group) can add or remove users.

A nice backend integration is built, I also ship some example templates to learn, how to integrate the provided functions to your theme.

Usage

For your template, build the following templates:
archive-biofoo_project.php – This gives an overview of the existing projects.
single-biofoo_project.php – Watch a single project.

Also you can edit your author.php to display the additional information.

The plugin contains some useful functions building these templates:
= get_biofoo();
Throw a from get_userinfo (not get_users!) or such into it, to get the advanced profile information.
Example:

ba_degree or $user->ma_degree) or $user->phd_degree) : ?>

ba_degree) : ?>B.A.ba_degree; ?>
ma_degree) : ?>M.A.ma_degree; ?>
phd_degree) : ?>Ph.D.phd_degree; ?>

echo_project_members(, , )

Displays (or returns) alls members of a project:

INT or STRING
The Id of a post with type biofoo_project. Instead of a post_id you may use the string keyword ‘all’ to get all users of the blog.

STRING
Default: boxes.
Knows the following styles:
* ‘longlist’ -> All members below each other with avatar and academic information.
* ‘boxes’ -> Boxes with
* ‘text’ -> The names of all members in a line as clickable links.
* ‘return’ -> Displays nothing but returns an array with the members of the project.

BOOLEAN
Default: true

If set to false, users, which are in passive user groups like alumni are not displayed.

the_boss()
Displays the leading members (P.I.s) of a project.

function list_users_projects()
Displays a list of projects, a user is member of.

Update Log

1.5
* Renamed file and folder to wp4labs.

1) Install plugin-files.
2) To enable caching of ariw.org-files got the plugin’s directory and give the wordpress writing rights for the folder ‘ariw_cache’ (777).
3) Go to site’s backend and add a project. Add some users to the project.
4) Build templates for your theme (see usage or example templates)

Where is the advanced user profile?

Build a new user. Save it. Now edit it. Now the new field should be visible.

Ariw.org-Database is not reachable

The plugin tries two ways of connecting to the Database. Under some circumstances both fail, due to security settings of your server. In that case, I can’t anything for you.

1. 

   The advanced user profile

2. 

   Adding a new Project

3. 

   The frontend of a Project may look like this

4. 

   The frontend of the user list may look like that