We’ll walk you through how to create a spreadsheet of your speakers and link it to your WordPress site step by step below.
Step 1
Please ensure the plugin is installed on your WordPress site. If you need assistance with that, please see our Installation guide.
Step 2
Next, you’ll need to copy or create a Google Sheet for your speakers. You will enter all of the relevant speaker information here, and in a later step we’ll show you how to sync it with the website. We’ve gone ahead and made a template for you, so if you like, you can just copy that from this link and it will already have all of the fields you need, spelled correctly, and you can skip to Step 4.
If you’d rather just create your own, log into your Google account and go to Google Drive. Select New, then Google Sheet, as per the screenshot below:
Step 3
Now, you’ll need to add headers in the first row of the Google Sheet. Please note: the headers must be spelled exactly as listed, and must be in the first row, in order for the plugin to recognize them and import the items correctly to your website. Please see the example below:
The headers should read as follows:
- Speaker First Name — enter the speaker’s first name
- Speaker Last Name — enter the speaker’s last name
- Title — enter the speaker’s job title
- Company/Organization — enter the name of the organization the speaker works for
- Bio — enter the speaker’s bio
- Website — enter a website for the speaker
- Photo Link — enter a link to the speaker’s photo; you can always upload the photo to your WordPress site and use that link
- Twitter — enter the speaker’s Twitter handle (note: DO NOT include the @ symbol here; it will be automatically added later)
Step 4
Now you’re free to add in your speaker details. Below is an example of a completed form. Note: if you have moderators, you can enter them here as if they were regular speakers; we’ll distinguish them later on the schedule spreadsheet.
Step 5
Once you’ve completed as many fields as you like, you’re ready to import your speakers. Remember, you can always update it and refresh at any time!
In order to import your schedule, first you’ll need to publish your Google Sheet to the web. Go to File –> Publish to the Web, as shown in the screenshot below. Publish the entire document as a web page (this is probably the default setting, you can just hit Publish).
Note: this technically makes your document public for anyone who has the link or knows how to perform advanced search techniques, so make sure you don’t have anything you absolutely want private listed here.
Note: you MUST go to File –> Publish to the Web; using the “Share” button below will not give you the correct link.
Step 6
Google will give you a unique URL. You just need to copy and paste this into your WordPress site. First, copy your URL:
… then, paste it into the Importer Settings area of your WordPress site as indicated below, in the field that says Speaker Doc URL.
After that … just hit Import Speakers and your speakers should update!
Note: you should only need to copy this URL once; if it works correctly the first time, the import tool will remember the URL and you can just hit “Import Speakers” to refresh your speaker list from now on.
And one more thing …
If you are using more than one tab in your Google sheet, you can tell the Import tool to pull information from a specific tab. As a default, it uses the very first Tab, which it calls “0.” If you add another tab, then you can enter 1 and the import tool will pull from this, or if you add a third tab you can enter 2 and so forth. The area where you can enter this information is highlighted below.
Updating or Adding Speakers
Whenever you need to update or add speaker information (or add speakers), simply make changes to the Google Sheet. Then return to the Importer Settings within WordPress and click Import Speakers again.
Removing Speakers
If you need to delete a speaker, you’ll have to make changes in two places:
- Delete the row in the Google Sheet.
- Go back to your WordPress site and find the custom post for the same speaker. Trash and permanently remove that post as well.
Deleting the row in the Google Sheet by itself will not remove the speaker from your website. You have to remove the speaker in both places.
Note: you only need to perform this step when removing a speaker in their entirety; if you’re just deleting one thing, such as speaker organization, you can just delete the information in that cell and update as you normally would.