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[Updated February 14, 2011]

When I had a chance to look into BuddyPress, the ‘social networking in a box’ for WordPress, I noticed that a plugin to search, or filter, the members directory was still missing.

So I released BP Profile Search. BP Profile Search adds a configurable search form to the Members directory page, so visitors can find site members searching their extended profiles.

This page contains the updated documentation for BP Profile Search 2.4.

Features

BP Profile Search shows your visitors a form to search or filter your Members directory. In the plugin admin page you can access the following options:

* Specify the text for the form header and welcome message (HTML enabled).

* Enable the show/hide form feature.

* Select the profile fields to include in the search form (currently the datebox profile fields are not supported).

* If your extended profiles include a birth date field, enable the age range search, so your visitors can specify the minimum and maximum age for their search.

* Select the search mode for text fields, between:
– partial match, where a search for John matches field values of John, Johnson, Long John Silver, and so on;
– exact match, where a search for John matches the field value John only.

In both modes the wildcard characters % (percent sign), matching zero or more characters, and _ (underscore), matching exactly one character, are available to your visitors to better specify their search.

* Select the members list to filter, if your Members Directory page contains more than one.

Installation

After the standard manual or automatic plugin installation procedure, you’ll be able to access the plugin admin page BuddyPress -> Profile Search.

Before you can use the plugin, you have to add the profile search form to your BuddyPress Members page.

If you are using the BuddyPress default theme, open index.php in the buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/members folder, locate this line (around line 14):

</div><!-- #members-dir-search -->

and, right after that, insert the BP Profile Search form:

<?php do_action ('bp_profile_search_form'); ?>

If you are not using the BuddyPress default theme, you have to insert the BP Profile Search form somewhere in your theme Members page.

Troubleshooting

- If your search always returns the full members list, try changing the Filtered Members List value in the Advanced Options tab.

Conclusions

I hope you find this plugin useful and help me improve it, with your suggestions, bug reports, and patches. BP Profile Search is available for download in the WordPress Plugin Directory and in the BuddyPress Plugin Directory.