What are Incomplete Profiles?


Incomplete profiles on search results, like shown down below, might have a negative effect on the users experience:




Having relevant content and search results plays a big part in increasing the website credibility.


With the Require Complete Profiles setting (shown down below), prevent incomplete profiles from populating the search results:




Changing the setting to "Require Complete Profiles to display in search results" will activate these criteria for both the admin backend filters and the frontend search results.


When activating, the member search results will only display members who at least have:


  • Name OR Company
  • Top-Level Category selected
  • Profile Photo OR Logo
  • Address


This is how the search results look after activating this advance setting:




Changing the setting to "Allow searching for complete profiles from the Admin only" will activate these criteria only in the admin backend to display the corresponding search filters, bu it won't apply to the website member search:


These are the filters that will get activated in the backend:




Changing the Requirements


By default the system will only require the following 4 fields:


  • Name OR Company
  • Top-Level Category selected
  • Profile Photo OR Logo
  • Address


This criteria can be changed through an advanced setting, Complete Profile Fields:


System Variable: complete_profile_fields




The variables used are:


  • company = Company
  • first_name = Name
  • file = Profile Photo or Logo
  • cover_photo = Cover Photo
  • profession_id = Top Category
  • service = Sub Categories


These variables can be removed or more can be added. When adding more variables, it is important that they match what is in the database table users_data, which is where all the default fields are stored.


For example, if the Phone Number is added to this list, the database variable needs to be included. 


This variable is phone_number:




Important Note


Custom fields can also be added to the setting, however to make it work with users_meta fields, which is where custom fields are stored, the site needs the Expanded Keyword Search add-on.