It is in human nature that we want to know who is the person/team behind the project. It helps us personalize the business and often end up with increase in sales. This is why most businesses have an about page with a list of people behind the project. In the past we have shown how to display an author list with avatars in WordPress, but that method requires a lot of code which is not ideal for beginners. If you are a beginner, and you want to build a staff directory in WordPress without dealing with any code, then you are at the right place. In this article, we will show you how to create a simple staff list in WordPress.
First thing you need to do is install and activate Simple Staff List plugin. Upon activation it adds a Staff Members menu item in your WordPress admin sidebar. Clicking on it will take you to the list of staff members. Since you have just installed the plugin, you will have to add each staff member. Click on Add New to add a new staff member to the list. You can add an image of the staff member, position, phone number, email, and biographical information.
Once you have added all the staff members, you can easily display it on any page or post on your site by using the shortcode below:
[simple-staff-list]
Simple staff list allows you to edit the layout and style for the staff list. Go to Staff Members » Templates, there you will find a list of template tags that you can use inside [staff_loop] wrapper.
[staff_loop] <img class="staff-member-photo" src="[staff-photo-url]" alt="[staff-name] : [staff-position]"> <div class="staff-member-info-wrap"> [staff-name-formatted] [staff-position-formatted] [staff-bio-formatted] [staff-email-link] </div> [/staff_loop]
You can add your own CSS styles or modify the default style and templates. Apart from that you can also set the display order for your staff list under Staff Members » Order.
For medium/large organizations, there is a feature that allows you to create groups of staff members. For example you can create a group for founders, investors, advisors, etc. To display a list of staff members from a particular group use this shortcode [simple-staff-list group="founders"].
Adding a staff members page under the about section of your website helps with personalization and consumer trust. People like to know who are they working with. We hope that this article helps you showcase your talented staff members and add a personal touch to your corporate site. Let us know how you showcase staff members on your website by leaving a comment below.
I have staff member pages but do not have an option to have their picture to the left of the bio on the page that lists all of the staff members. I can only add a picture to their individual page. Help!!!
Hi Great recommendation, do you know if there is a search shortcode to find details on employees. There is one listed in the admin panel But i need one on the front end.
We tested it with WP 3.9.1 and it works fine.
This plugin hasn’t been test with the latest version, WordPress 3.91.
Hi, I have WP v. 3.9.1. and Simple Staff List v 1.15 plugin.
I created a person in the wp-admin. Then I used
which writes out the person. Nice, but I have a special div structure prepared for this, so it would be nice to have access to the individual parameters (name, email, phone, …), so I can place them at a correct place.
I tried the following:
also the original code without from the Templates, but it always results in a plain text as if I intended to write out “[staff_loop]” on my page. See the attachement. The person above the text is the code.
Where am I making the mistake? Thanks!
Hi there, i used Simple Staff List plugin in wordpress
but got error in image uploading, using Nevo theme.
can you please help me. Thank you
i have added a new field but when i view it on the page the data added in a new field does not show up……..Hep me….
Pretty cool plugin
Are you planning to go on with the development of it?
This plugin is great but absolutely falls short at one thing: Providing a competent Individual Staff Member page. To do so requires knowledge of PHP, which for something labeled as “simple”, is rather strange.
The discussion at this post: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/link-to-staff-member-page did not provide a full solution, and Peggyst did not provide a full solution either. It’s all vague and piecemeal.
I can get the information about the staff person to appear, but I cannot get it to play nice with the Twenty Thirteen (default) theme. Any idea as to what I’m doing wrong and how I can fix it? I know the solution lies SOMEWHERE in the simple.php file but, like the support thread, it’s not at all clear.
How can you display a single staff page? I have checked the WordPress forum for this information but every response appear too vague (or perhaps too advanced) for me. I have not been successful with every suggestion because of lack of clarity. I understand how to create the single-page.php but finding it difficult to incorporate this plugin to it.
Thank you for your help.
You can create a simple Page in WordPress to create a staff page.
Thanks for your reply but this doesn’t explain the issue. As you can see on the post here at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/link-to-staff-member-page, a lot of people are having problems creating a stand-alone staff page. I have read that forum many times and still confused on what to do.
Basically, at what point do you insert the staff loop and how do you print or output the custom post data on the page. It will be great if you can write a followup post on this as many people seem to be struggling with this same issue.
Thanks for your work.
Joseph, the support thread you are referring to is a discussion about creating a support staff list page, where each individual staff member has their own page. On the same thread, Peggyst has posted the solution.
What’s the best (and easiest) way to add rows? I’d like to make the staff members go across horizontally instead of vertically in one column.
I’ve checked the forums, but everything they’ve been adding is a bit too advanced for my taste. I’m a WP/CSS/htmml newb.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
You can do that with CSS. First use this template for your staff loop
Then you can use CSS to set width, maximum height, float to left, etc. We haven’t tested it exactly but should work.
This template for the horizontal staff display is missing a s closing “>” at the end of line 2. Correcting this adds-in the photo some people are having trouble with.
Thanks, fixed it.
Using the loop template suggested, you can layout your staff list in two columns with the following CSS:
/* div wrapped around each staff member */
div.staff-member {
width: 40%;
}
/* “Even” staff member */
div.staff-member.even {
float: right;
clear: both;
}
/* “Odd” staff member */
div.staff-member.odd {
float: left;
}
Have fun!
I’have facing Same Problem DAWID.
I can’t add photo into people of the company.
The problem may occur due to a number of reasons. You should open a support thread on the plugin’s page in WordPress plugin directory.
whenever i put the [simple-staff-list] in the page nohting happens in the list it doesnt show up at ll i can no idea wht im doing wrong.
for testing purposes try switching to a default wordpress theme. If this does not solve your problem try deactivating all plugins except simple staff list. If this resolves your problem, then there is a plugin causing the conflict.
This is really great, but I want to use this tool for a contributors page instead of “Staff”. I get emailed articles of which I post, and I would like to create a page to add in a short list of bios of all my authors whom of which have no access to my page. Any ideas? Would almost be like a form I need to fill in for each new author I guess?
Yes, you would have to do this for each author unless you want to deal with code by pulling each author profile/description automatically.
How do get the picture and the bio in 2 columns like the example? Thanks
Just a follow up on a comment I’d written previously. How can I add more fields to the already existing ones?
You would have to dig through the code to find the filter. Asking in the support forum to the author would be the fastest thing if you don’t like digging through the code.
Timely! Just what I needed for a project this week. Be blessed
and keep all the help coming 
Thanks for this info. It was really helpful. And the plugin is really good.
This is what I have been doing by hand, looks like I need to check this one out. Thanks for the tip!
Thanks! I was searching for this plugin. It will help a lot. Problem I’m facing is that I can’t add photo into people of the company. I tried to reinstall plugin, to add new people, edit old one, tried few different photos and nothing. All the time “white line”. What to do?