How to Create a Flexible WordPress Member Directory

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Looking for a way to create a WordPress member directory to showcase users or team members at your site?

A WordPress member directory is great for a variety of businesses and organizations, as it lets you show off your team members, clients, supporters, etc.

In this post, I’ll show you how to create a highly customizable WordPress member directory, complete with the option to add:

Search functionality
Filters
Pagination/lazy loading
Etc.

The end product will look something like below, and your visitors will be able to click through to each member’s profile for more information (if desired – this part is optional!).

WordPress member directory example

Ready to get started? Here’s how to create a WordPress member directory…

What You Need to Create a WordPress Member Directory

To follow this tutorial and create your own customizable WordPress member directory, you’ll need two plugins:

Pods – free – this plugin helps you store your members, along with any additional information you want to display (like job title, email, phone etc.). Another good premium option here is Toolset Types, which offers similar functionality, plus a whole lot more options.
Posts Table Pro – $79 – this plugin helps you take those members and display them on the front-end of your site in a customizable, searchable, and filterable interface.

Put them together, and you’ve got everything you need to manage your members on both the backend and frontend of your site.

Here’s your step-by-step guide for how to use these two plugins to create a member directory on WordPress…

Step 1: Create Member Custom Post Type and Custom Fields With Pods

To get started, you’ll need to create a custom post type to house your members, along with custom fields for any extra information that you want to record. Don’t worry – though it might sound a little intimidating, this is super simple and I’ll show you every step – no code required!

To create both your custom post type and custom fields, you can use the free Pods plugin, which is listed at WordPress.org.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, here’s how to use it…

Create a New Custom Post Type

To get started, go to Pods Admin → Add New. Then, choose the option to Create New to create your members custom post type:

Create CPT

Leave the Content Type as Custom Post Type and enter a singular and plural label:

Add labels

Then, click Next Step to create your custom post type. After that, you’ll be in the Edit Pod interface – leave this open because you’ll use it in the next step.

Add Custom Fields as Needed

Custom fields help you store additional information about each individual member. Common examples of what you could use custom fields for are:

Job title
Email
Phone number
Website
Etc.

To add a new custom field with Pods, you just click the Add Field button in the Edit Pod interface. That will add a new field box where you can configure all the details.

For example, to collect a member’s email, you’d configure it like this:

Pods CPT interface

Add separate fields for all of the information that you want to collect. At the end, it might look something like below. Notice how each field type is different according to the information that you’re collecting:

Custom fields

If you want to add a profile image for each member, you don’t need a custom field. Instead, go to the Advanced Options tab:

Advanced options

Then, scroll down to the Supports section and check the box for Featured Image:

Add featured image support

You can also use the Built-in Taxonomies section to add support for taxonomies like categories or tags. If you want, you can use Pods to create a custom taxonomy and then associate that taxonomy with your Members post type. While this is totally optional, it will help make it easier for visitors to filter your members.

Once you’re finished, make sure to click Save Pod to save your changes.

Step 2: Add Members to Custom Post Type

Now, you’re ready to actually add your members. To do that, go to Members → Add New in your WordPress dashboard.

Here, you can add a new member much like you’d add a new post:

Title – add the member’s name here.
Featured Image – upload a profile picture (if desired)
Post body – if you want, you can add a short biography here

Add members

Below the post body, you can also enter any custom fields that you added. And if you added custom taxonomies, those will appear in the sidebar like a regular WordPress category or tag:

Add custom fields

Make sure to click Publish when you’re done. Then, repeat the process for all of the other members that you want to add to your directory.

Step 3: Display Member Directory With Posts Table Pro

Once you’ve added all of your members, you’re ready to create your front-end WordPress member directory with Posts Table Pro.

Here’s how to do it…

Configure Posts Table Pro Settings

After you’ve installed and activated the Posts Table Pro plugin, go to Settings → Posts Table Pro in your dashboard to configure its settings.

First, choose your new member custom post type from the Post type drop-down. This tells Posts Table Pro to display members in its table, rather than regular WordPress blog posts:

Posts Table Pro settings

Then, you can use the Table content section to control what information shows up in your WordPress member directory.

In this section, the Columns option is the most important. This is where you specify what information to display in your directory. You can learn about all the options in this help article, but I’ll give you some examples based on the information and custom fields in this tutorial.

Let’s say you want to display all of the information that we created above. That is, you want to include a person’s:

Profile picture
Name
Biography
Title
Email
Phone number

If so, you would use these columns:

image,title,content,cf:title_of_member,cf:email,cf:phone

To find the name of the custom fields to append after “cf:”, you can look at the Name column in Pods:

Field names

Beyond adding the columns, you can also:

Use an image lightbox
Change the length of the biography (making it -1 will show the full biography)

Configure columns

Further down in this settings area, you can also configure:

Lazy loading
Pagination
Sorting
Filters
Search box
Etc.

For example, if you added some custom taxonomies, you can create a filter drop-down to let users filter by those taxonomies:

Configure other settings

Add Posts Table Pro Shortcode

Once you’ve finished configuring Posts Table Pro’s settings, you can use the plugin’s shortcode to add your front-end WordPress member directory.

The shortcode is [posts_table]

To add it, go to the post or page where you want to include your WordPress member directory and add the shortcode (if you’re using the WordPress block editor, you can use a shortcode block):

Add Posts Table Pro shortcode

Once you add the shortcode, you should see your member directory at that page. Once again, here’s what our example looks like:

WordPress member directory example

Create Your WordPress Member Directory Today!

With Pods and Posts Table Pro, it’s easy to create a customizable WordPress member directory to showcase team members, clients, sponsors, or any other type of member.

To create your member directory, you’ll need to:

Create a new custom post type with Pods
Add any relevant custom fields or custom taxonomies with Pods
Add your members to the new custom post type
Configure the Posts Table Pro settings
Add the Posts Table Pro shortcode wherever you want your WordPress member directory to appear

Have any other questions about how to create a member directory on WordPress? Let us know in the comments!

About Colin Newcomer

Colin Newcomer is a freelance blogger for hire with a background in SEO and affiliate marketing. He helps clients grow their web visibility by writing primarily about digital marketing, WordPress, and B2B topics.