We have had a few requests on the subject of how to deal with sites that already have CB Fields in place that do to match our guidelines page. This is the whole reason for the field mapping in both the component for Joomla 1.1 and Joomla 1.5. The names fields to the right on the guidelines page can be anything you want as long as they match the fields in your system. However every field must have a valid name that matches an existing CB field or new field. The only field name that must be exact is the cb_memberapikey. You would not have that in place anyway so just add it and be done with it. the cb_memberapikey field does not show in the mapper, but make sure you did not omit this on the CB Field Setup page.   Here are some facts and cheats

1) If I already have hundreds or thousands of members will it mess up the data to add new fields?
No! The point of the field manager is to make your website extensible. Meaning you can grow it over time. When you add a new field it just shows up blank for all member entries until the next time they update their profile. At that time they will see the new field and can plug some pertinent information in.

2) Okay, but man - I don't want some of this data showing up in the iPhone or in the XML!
That is reasonable. I would create a new field. Call it something like cb_dummy. Make it a text field.  Make it active. However do not publish it on the profile page or registration. No on see it or can fill it in. No, any field you do not want have have data go to the API, or iPhone plug in this field name in the mapping. Here, let us show you the light.

We suggested This:

 
Lest say you are okay with first name rendering, but not middle, last or address. You can add the dummy field as suggested above and do something like this

This of course is a short version as there are 14 fields. If you need help with this please post on the forums. Post your site URL so we can hit the API. Once we got that going with no XML garbage you can PM or form submit your field names if you want to keep them private and we can make a sample map for you.

We understand if you do not regularly set up custom fields for clients this my be a bit overwhelming. Please contact us for support.

Sometime around January 22 we are going to make some screen casts of all this that should be much more helpful.

Click the Add New button. When adding fields we will supply recommended names. You should be able to user your own preferred names as there is a field mapping aspect to the  JoomlaDo Members RSS Component. Or you may already have some of these fields with different names you would like to user. However it you are starting from scratch you are less likely to get confused later if you follow our guidelines.

Moving forward we will learn to add 11 custom fields to the Community Builder Field Manager. 10 of these you will be able to choose your own name. The cb_memberAPIKey may not be any other name nor did we give you a field in the Joomlado Member RSS component to attempt this.

The component reads from three database tables. The main user table, the sessions table and one of the Community Builder tables from the component we are going to add on the next page.

Here is a list of table and field values the comonent is going to read.

jos_users

• id
• gid
• name
• username
• email
• registerDate
• lastVisitDate

 jos_sessions

• time

• avatar
• avatarapproved
• lastupdatedate
• firstname
• middlename
• lastname
• cb_gender
• cb_address1
• cb_address2
• cb_city
• cb_state
• cb_zipcode
• cb_country
• cb_phone
• cb_fax
• cb_website
• cb_memberapikey

cb_gender
Type : Single Drop Down
Make sure its single drop down and to fill in at least two genders. the iPhone App supports four. They  values can be called anything as we send a numberic value of 1-4 to the mobile device.

cb_address1
Type : Text Field