I need a specific CMS that allows each user to edit one part of a page.

November 5, 2009 2:27 PM

I need a page of bios integrated into a WordPress site. I would like to give each person the ability to update his own bio without letting him mess with other people's bios. It would be awesome if the list was alphabetized.

In other words, if you visit the bio page, you'll see something like this:

Fred Alberts has worked at Acme for five years. He lives in New Jersey...

Alice Jordan loves the NY Times Crossword and...

Peter Smith is a gourmet chef who has lived in London and Paris...


If, say, Alice no longer likes the crossword puzzles, I would like her to be able to log in someplace and change her bio, but I don't want her to be able to change Fred's bio.

This system will slowly grow in terms of me adding more people. Currently, there are about 100 people. I will probably add about ten more people to it each year. These people will regularly want to update their bios, and I don't want them to have to email me each time they want a change made.

Ultimately, I want all the bios on to be on one page of a Wordpress blog.

Is this something that exists already, or do I have to code it myself?

posted by grumblebee to computers & internet (5 answers total)

I would make a custom template that shows all the posts from the Bios category in alphabetical order and then apply it to a blank page.
posted by Memo at 2:43 PM on November 5, 2009

I would do exactly what Memo describes. There will then be 100 bio "posts" somewhere in the system and each person is the author of their own post (they don't have to write it, you can change to having them as the author on your own). You only have to display them on one page, the category page which is set to "show all" and alphabetizes them. You can then make them also not show up on the main page using a plugin like Advanced Category Excluder
posted by jessamyn at 3:24 PM on November 5, 2009

Using that method, I think you'll have problems getting the bios sorted by alphabetical order of the last name, though.
posted by msbrauer at 5:00 PM on November 5, 2009

I think you can do this if you're savvy about the post title but you might be better off using something like smart sort where users can choose a sort option [with maybe alpha being the defauls] because with 100 people, you might just want to see the ten newest people first, for example. Alternately, this page sort of explains how to code a custom query if nothing else fits the bill.
posted by jessamyn at 5:08 PM on November 5, 2009

Thanks, all. Sounds like a plan!
posted by grumblebee at 7:28 PM on November 5, 2009