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Simple User Listing

By HelgaTheViking

User Management & Authentication / User Registration & Login

Simple User Listing Review - In-Depth Analysis

A shortcode for displaying customizable paginated lists of users. Ideal for theme developers.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.93/10

User Rating

5/5 (based on 17+ reviews)

Active Installations

900+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

7.1 / 10 (High Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

This plugin allows you to display paginated lists of users in a customizable way. Unlike other plugins, it offers templates that can be overridden and styled to fit your theme.

To customize any of the templates, simply copy the file from the plugin's 'templates' folder to your theme's 'simple-user-listing' folder. This flexibility makes it perfect for developers looking to integrate user listings seamlessly.

Use the shortcode [userlist] anywhere on your site to show a complete list of your blog's users. The plugin automatically adheres to the 'Posts per Page' setting found under Settings->Reading, but you can adjust this and other settings through the shortcode parameters.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Simple User Listing plugin.

user listing

customizable templates

shortcode

FAQ

The whole reason I wrote this was that other similar plugins had too much control over the output. You can style the output anyway you’d like by adding your own template parts to your theme.

Copy the files you wish to modify from the simple-user-listing/templates folder of the plugin and paste them into a simple-user-listing folder in the root of your theme (so my-theme/simple-user-listing). Now you can change the markup any way you please. It will be similar to template parts for post loops, except you will have access to each user’s $user object instead of the $post object.

For more details on what is available in the $user object see the Codex reference on WP_User()

There are two ways to remove the search input. The search is added to a hook by the plugin, so you can remove it by adding the following to your theme’s functions.php file:

function remove_SUL_search() {     remove_action( 'simple_user_listing_before_loop',   'sul_template_user_search' ); } add_action( 'simple_user_listing_before_loop', 'remove_SUL_search', 5 );

Or you could copy the search-author.php from the plugin’s template folder to a simple-user-listing folder in your theme (so simple-user-listing/searcch-author.php) and remove all the code from it so that it is blank.

Simple User Listing supports most of the parameters of the WP_User_Query class as parameters for the shortcode. For example you can pass it a role defining which type of users you’d like to list. You can also adjust the number of users displayed per page. Roles must be in lowercase.

[userlist role="author" number="5"]

As of version 1.2 you can now sort the user list by and of the sort parameters supported by WP_User_Query(). For example, the following would list your users based on number of posts written, with the highest first.

[userlist orderby="post_count" order="DESC"]

As of version 1.4 you can now list users by a meta key. Be careful with this as this is not exactly an efficient query.

[userlist meta_key="foo" meta_value="widgets"]

As of version 1.4.2 you can now include and exclude users with a comma separated list of IDs.

[userlist exclude="1,2,3"]

The full list of supported parameters (shown with default value) is:

'query_id' => 'simple_user_listing', // This allows for targeted filtering of pre_get_user which allows for very custom queries. 'role' => '', // Multiple roles can be defined in a comma separated list [userlist role="infield,outfield"] 'role__in' => '', // Multiple roles can be defined in a comma separated list  'role__not_in' => // Multiple roles can be defined in a comma separated list 'include' => '', // Multiple user IDs can be defined in a comma separated list 'exclude' => '', // Multiple user IDs can be defined in a comma separated lis 'blog_id' => '', 'number' => get_option( 'posts_per_page', 10 ), 'order' => 'ASC', 'orderby' => 'login', 'meta_key' => '', 'meta_value' => '', 'meta_compare' => '=', 'meta_type' => 'CHAR', 'count_total' => true, 'template' => 'author' // Corresponds to content-author.php template, can accept different templates per shortcode.

As of verison 1.5.2 you could simply use the following as your shortcode:

[userlist meta_key="last_name" orderby="meta_value" order="ASC"]

While you could modify the search-author.php template, if you are only searching by one field it isn’t really neccessary. You will, however, need to modify the shortcode’s arguments for WP_User_Query. You can do that by filtering sul_user_query_args.

Add the following to your theme’s functions.php:

/**  * Place this in your theme's functions.php file  * Or a site-specific plugin  *  */ // Switch the WP_User_Query args to a meta search function kia_meta_search( $args ) {      // This $_GET is the name field of the custom input in search-author.php.     $search = ( isset($_GET['as']) ) ? sanitize_text_field($_GET['as']) : false ;      if ( $search ) {         // If your shortcode has a 'role' parameter defined it will be maintained.         // Unless you choose to unset the role parameter by uncommenting the following:         //  unset( $args['role'] );         $args['meta_key'] = 'last_name';         $args['meta_value'] = $search;         $args['meta_compare'] = '=';          // Need to unset the original search args.         if ( isset( $args['search'] ) ) unset($args['search']);     }      return $args; } add_filter( 'sul_user_query_args', 'kia_meta_search' );

Now the search will return users that match the entered “last_name”. You can adjust as needed or use the meta_query array for more complicated meta queries.

By default the WordPress search relies on username, though wih the search_columns parameter can be made to search the user’s email or ID. Frankly, I think this is weird, but that’s how WordPress works.

It is much more useful to search by the user’s display name, however this requires some trickery via the pre_user_query hook. Similar to pre_get_posts this is your last chance to change the WP_User_Query query before it is executed. I’ve built in a query_id variable so that you don’t go willy-nilly filtering all user queries which could have some unintended side effects.

// Switch user search from user_login to display_name via query_where  function kia_search_users_by_display_name( $query ) {    if ( isset( $query->query_vars['query_id'] ) && $query->query_vars['query_id'] === 'simple_user_listing' ) {      $query->query_where = str_replace( "user_login", "display_name", $query->query_where );   }  }  add_action( 'pre_user_query', 'kia_search_users_by_display_name' );

It isn’t worth the effort to get the shortcode parameters to handle complex arrays. And in the end it isn’t necessary as there are several filters in place to permit you to run a complex query. The key will be using the query_id parameter.

For example you could pass a specific ID via shortcode:

[userlist query_id="my_custom_meta_query"]

And then in your theme’s functions.php or a site-specific plugin, you could filter the user query args:

add_filter( 'sul_user_query_args', 'sul_custom_meta_query', 10, 2 );  function sul_custom_meta_query( $args, $query_id ) {     // Checking the query ID allows us to only target a specific shortcode.     if ( $query_id === 'my_custom_meta_query' ) {         $args['meta_query'] = array(             'relation' => 'OR',             array(                 'key'       => 'billing_city',                 'value'     => 'oslo',                 'compare'   => '=',                 'type'      => 'CHAR',             ),             array(                 'key'       => 'first_name',                 'value'     => 'bobby',                 'compare'   => '=',                 'type'      => 'CHAR',             )         );     }     return $args; }

For complex queries, you will want to read the WP Codex reference on WP_User_Query.

Likely you are experiencing a conflict with another plugin, specifically one that is filtering pre_user_query to modify all user queries. The S2 Member plugin is a known culprit of this. To disable S2 Member’s modifications on all Simple User Listing lists, add the following to your theme’s functions.php or to a site-specific plugin. Ensure you are using at least SUL 1.5.3.

function kia_protect_sul_from_s2() {     remove_action('pre_user_query', 'c_ws_plugin__s2member_users_list::users_list_query'); } add_action( 'simple_user_listing_before_loop', 'kia_protect_sul_from_s2' );  function kia_restore_s2() {     add_action('pre_user_query', 'c_ws_plugin__s2member_users_list::users_list_query'); } add_action( 'simple_user_listing_after_loop', 'kia_restore_s2' );