I’m looking for a good member profile management platform.
I just want something like a “community wall” or simple profile app, like you’d see on a university department website with the list of faculty members, that shows a list of our members with their photos and some basic information (company, profession, etc.–features should be customizable).
We’ve been using a Google Sheet with “Awesome Tables” and that’s been enough though far from ideal. Now they’re starting to charge a high premium and I need to find something else.
My problem so far is that everything I can find seems to be overkill. I don’t want a tool for chatting or sharing documents or really for any type of community interaction (we’ve already have good tools for that). I do NOT want it to be part of a bigger package of services like coworking space management software or CRM software. Just a simple tool for showing off our community in a pretty way.
Here are some ideal features (necessary ones have an exclamation point):
Should be able to customize the url so it’s on our domain!
Should have zapier integration so we can add members automatically when they join our coworking space!
Should be able to automatically invite members by their email address to set up an account so they can edit their profiles
Should allow users to specify the “public / private” level of their profile so they can be visible to the public (on the website), just to other members (if they’re logged in), or just to admin (at minimum, we should be able to choose a fixed level of access so that they’re either all public or all just visible to members so that we could create two different community views)!
it could be a WorkPress plugin
for me anything more than $10 / month would be too much; the community will never be more than 500 members
Anyone have any ideas? I’ve spent a long time looking and haven’t found the right thing, but I know there’s a lot out there.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m already committed to WordPress so Wix won’t work for me. Also need something with a straightforward Zapier integration so I don’t have to hire a programmer to set it up and so that we don’t have to manually add each member when they join.
That’s a great question to ask! Do you use a coworking software to manage your space? I know our software allows to show a member listing with basic functionalities such as
Search for name, company, or a skill.
Photo gallery of all members.
Basic contact information, profile, skills, job history, etc.
Plus, we use a custom field and notes to keep track of our members (what they like, favorite coffee, nicknames, etc)
I don’t use coworking space software to manage my space. They tend to be both too much and too little for my needs, if that makes sense, and I’d much prefer to work with smaller individual apps for each of the things we do.
I’m surprised there aren’t a lot of options on the market just for creating nice community profile walls on websites that members of the community themselves can manage. I feel like I must just be missing the proper search term as I would think it would have much broader appeal than just for coworking spaces.
A colleague who saw my message here recommended UPME (“User Profiles Made Easy”), a WordPress plugin with a zapier integration, but he hasn’t used it himself. It looks great on paper, but I’d love to hear from someone with experience with it.
Hey Will, not sure if you’ve already found a solution but what you’re after can be done by combining a number of wp plugins on your own site.
For example a form builder, the custom post type gui plugin and something to help with filtering based on custom fields and/or taxonomies.
If you’d like more help with that let me know and I can make some recommendations.
Source: I’m the code whisperer behind a bunch of coworking-supporting projects with 15+ years on extending Wordpress from a blog platform to an application platform.
– it’s not specific for coworking spaces but has member profiles and allows customization. I was looking at it before when I wanted to build a facebook like community.
Did you pick a platform or solution in the end? it seems odd that there isn’t a simple solution for member profiles.
S
@shanedevane I never did find a solution that worked well for me, but I sold the coworking space more than a year ago, so it’s no longer something I’m actively pursuing.
Hi Will,
I discovered the topic just now! To be honest with you, I found your request very complicated because the expectations you have for a “basic tool” are very personalized still. I would have recommended you to develop your own virtual member wall, like one of the best & oldest coworking spaces here in Portugal did it
I’ll share a video with you (language unfortunately portuguese)
