Build or integrate a searchable directory

Any recommendations on how to integrate a searchable directory into a Ghost website? If this is beyond my pay grade I would be up for a quote to set it up, as I know it will be a worthwhile investment.

“Members” would be a main nav link and the directory if not able to be done in Ghost, would hopefully look like it was part of the main site.

The directory has multiple members searchable by country/town, the produce they sell. So a search would bring up a list with eg Bill Bloggs; NY, NY; Eggs, Meat

Each member has a profile page which displays the following:

1 - a general bio/introduction with contact details. This can all be manually added.

2 - a link to all the member’s blog posts (published on the main site).

3 - a link to reviews of the member’s business that have been left on the website .

4 - a listing of the products the member sells selected from Fruit, Eggs, Vegetables, Non-cow dairy, Dairy and Meat.

I used to have a WP site with profile pages for each member, using a fairly simple set up: categories to organise/search each member’s posts; a review plugin to enable visitors to leave a review and show them all on each member’s own review page; and a manually added list of services provided.

What’s the Ghost way of doing this? Thanks

In Ghost, a concept similar to your “members” is authors, you can think of authors as members and group posts and products around them. You may also want to change route.yaml file to rename “author” to “member”.

As for search functionality, Ghost has a built-in search for authors and posts, but you need some customization to make it fit your needs. Such as adding full text search, focusing the search specifically on members.

1 Like

Thanks for the pointers. I can look into those ideas.

By the way, in Ghost, authors must be invited via email to be added. If you don’t want to invite them directly, you can register authors yourself by using your email with a plus sign. For example, if your email is john@gmail.com, you can register as john+shopping@gmail.com or john+work@gmail.com."

1 Like

So far so good. Profile page built, itemised member listing (ie authors) done. Search more precise. That’s that part of the project up and running. Thanks

1 Like