I’m looking for a feature member plugin to use with ExpressionEngine so that a random username, picture and small snippet of information could be placed on a main page everytime it was viewed.  I know this simple little thing has to have been implemented already but I’ve yet to come across it.  Could someone point it out to me please?

Regards,
  Jerry

I’ve never heard of a plugin that does this.

Jamie

It would probably be rather easy to do using the {exp:query} tag.  Maybe something like:

Chris Curtis - 15 July 2005 05:20 PM

It would probably be rather easy to do using the {exp:query} tag.  Maybe something like:

{exp:query sql="SELECT screen_name, photo_filename, bio FROM exp_members ORDER BY rand() LIMIT 1"}

<p>Name: [color=red]EE lover[/color]</p>

<p>Photo: <img src="/images/member_photos/{photo_filename}" /></p>

<p>Bio: {bio}</p>

{/exp:query}

The code you provided is being phrased as logged in user’s name.
Strange and risky! Is that because you’re a super admin?

LOL- it’s showing my name for me!  Think it’s conflicting with a global.  Try something like:

yada yada

Just the forum interpreting the code for some reason.  rob1‘s suggestion is a good one, though.  I went ahead and updated my example to change the variable name.

Chris that about did it, thank you.  This software is fun to work with.

That code works great!

How would I do the same thing if I wanted to profile a specific member instead of a random member?

Also how would I profile the author of an article on a permalink page?

I think the Member Info Plugin should do what you want, Cindy.

For a specific member, you can just hard-code the member ID in the Plugin tag.

For the author on a specific entry, just put the plugin tag inside your {exp:weblog:entries} tag and use the {author_id} variable to set the member ID.

That did the trick. Thanks Chris.

Wiki’d

Those two methods worked fine but now I want to profile the currently logged in user.

screen_name and photo_{member_id}.jpg work well for Name and Photo but how do I display the Bio? Is it a variable or a query or what?

Also I want to limit how much of the Bio is displayed to about 180 characters with a link to a page with the full profile. Is this possible?

Thanks so much!

You should be able to use the Member Info plugin still and just use the {member_id} global variable to supply the current user’s ID.

As for limiting the Bio display, try the “word limiter” or “Filter HTML” plugins.  You may need to worry about the parse order of the plugins when you nest them.

Chris I am starting to bang my head on the desk. I am using this code with no luck:

If I hard code the member ID the code works or if I just have the member_id tag by itself it will return the correct number. But when I put the two together I get a blank.

Can you think of what I need to look at to fix this?

Hmm, I bet the Plugin is getting parsed before the {member_id} Global Variable is populated with a value.

You can get around this using some PHP if you want.  You’ll need to set your Template to enable PHP parsing and specify “input” parsing.  Then at the top of your Template you can add something like:

Then, when you need to use the Member Info plugin, echo the member ID out:

Yes, that’s it! I have it working just the way I want now. Thanks Chris.

I have a related question: how can I display the most recent weblog entry by random author? So rather than bio I’d like to querry for title, summery etc. for a specific weblog, in addition to author screen name and photo.

Here’s how I’m showing author photo

Pretty clunky, but the best I could figure. Is there a better way?

I was looking for a way to display entries by random authors and found this thread. I didn’t know that EE allows us to nest exp:weblog tags inside exp:query tags but I gave it a try anyway. Now it looks like it’s doing what I need.

First I use SQL to query for random usernames from the exp_members table checking if they have entries using the last_entry_date column, then I just use the username tag inside the exp:weblog tag.

I’m surprised that EE can handle this. Even if it isn’t an elegant solution, EE seems to figure it out.

This is a great tip. Thanks everyone.

One question (as I am a n00b with queries)...

How can you make the query return ONLY members whose data are NOT empty? Specifically, I only want to display members who have data in both “bio” and “avatar_filename”. I’ve tried the !=”” route, but no luck.

Thanks!

EDIT

I figured it out. I was using double quotes (!=”“) instead of single quotes (!=’‘). Duh!