Practical guides / By Kris Singh

How to make a searchable staff directory on Squarespace

Most church and charity websites have a "Meet the team" page, and on Squarespace it usually starts the same way: a grid of photos, a name under each one, maybe a role. That works for eight people. It gets harder at twenty-five, and much harder when someone wants to know who looks after youth in the Lower North Island, or who speaks Samoan, or simply who to email about the hall booking.

There's a lot you can do with the tools Squarespace gives you, and a point where a plugin earns its place. Here are two practical ways to approach it.

The free way: a list section

Squarespace 7.1 has list sections built for people, with a photo, a name, a short description and a button for each person. For a small team they're hard to beat. They're easy to edit, they look tidy on a phone, and there's nothing to install.

A few habits make a list section work better:

• Write the role on the first line of each description, and keep the bio to two sentences, so the grid stays even.
• Use the same photo crop for everyone. Square portraits with the face in the upper third look the most consistent.
• Put a mailto link on the button, so "Contact" really does start an email.

Where it runs out

The trouble starts when the list gets long or the questions get specific. A list section can't be searched or filtered. Everyone has to scroll through everyone. You can't group people by team without making a separate section for each team and keeping them all in step. And because each person lives inside the page itself, you can't reuse the same people on a ministry page, a contact page and the staff page without copying them three times.

A hidden blog as the team database

One way to organise this: make a blog called "Team Members", keep it out of the navigation and hide it from search engines, and write one post per person. Squarespace's blog editor already has everything a person needs. The title becomes the name, the thumbnail the portrait and the excerpt the short bio. Categories hold teams, and tags hold places, skills and languages. Anyone who can write a blog post can now add or update a person, and the information lives in one place.

The catch is that a blog displays people as blog posts, which isn't what you want on a team page. That's the gap the plugin fills.

The plugin I built for this

Team Directory reads that hidden blog and turns it into a proper directory. There's a search box that covers names, roles, teams and skills, team chips with counts, and filters for location and language. Each person opens a profile with email and call buttons. It picks up your site's own fonts and colours, so it looks like the rest of your site rather than something bolted on.

The setup check tells you which people are missing a role, a photo or contact details, so the directory doesn't quietly look half-finished.

If you'd rather stay with a list section, the habits above will take you a long way. There's a live demo on a made-up church if you want to see the other route first.

Before installing a plugin

Check that your Squarespace plan allows JavaScript in Code blocks. Squarespace documents this for Core, Plus and Advanced plans and some legacy plans. Read the plugin’s install guide before you buy, then test the published page on a phone. A page kept out of navigation is still public; only publish information intended for visitors.

Squarespace: adding custom code · Squarespace: categories and tags