Talent directory

The Talents plugin shows Studio Center’s voice talent on your site. The talent comes straight from the Studio Center auditions app, so you don’t type anyone in twice. When someone’s details change in the app, the site catches up on its own.

Visitors get:

• a talent list (at /talent/voices/search-all-voices-2 unless you change it), with a name search and filters (gender, age range, union status, typecasts, and more), and
• a profile page for each person (at /talent/voices/search-all-voices-2/talent-info), with their demo, details, and typecasts.

Every search has its own web address, so visitors can bookmark a result or send it to someone.

Before you start

You need a talents API key from the auditions app. An administrator of the auditions app creates it under Tools → Ops dashboard. Name it after your site, for example “studiocenter.com”. Ordinary staff keys from the app’s settings won’t work.

Set it up

1. Go to Extensions, find Talents, and choose Install. Approve the permissions it asks for. Read more in Extensions.
2. Open Talents → Settings.
3. Leave Auditions app address as it is (https://studiocenterauditions.com).
4. Paste the key into Talents API key and choose Save.
5. Open Talents → Connection and choose Test connection. You should see something like “Connected to https://studiocenterauditions.com. The API has 1,234 talent.”

Your talent list is now live, at the same address the old site used: /talent/voices/search-all-voices-2. Add it to your menu under Pages & Design → Navigation; see Design.

Note

If your site has a published page at the talent list’s or profile’s address, that page is shown instead. When you bring over the old site’s pages, leave out the two that held the talent list and profile.

Choose what visitors see

In Talents → Settings:

• Talent page title and Talent page introduction appear at the top of the list.
• Talent per page sets how many people each page of the list shows.
• Names shows full names (Jordan Smith) or first names with a last initial (Jordan S.).
• The Show … switches choose which details are public: gender, age range, union status, typecasts, preferred language, location, Voice Over Academy, demos, and exclusivity. Visitors can only filter by details that are shown.
• Demo players in the talent list lets visitors play demos straight from the list. Profiles always have the player.
• Profile button text and Profile button link add a button to every profile, for example “Book this voice” linking to /contact.

Private details stay private

Email addresses, phone numbers, birth years, parent names, Source Connect usernames, outage times, and producers are never shown, whatever you switch on. The name search only matches names, so nobody can use it to look someone up by email address or phone number.

Choose the addresses

The talent list and the profiles keep the old site’s addresses, so links people saved and search results still work. To use different ones, change these in Talents → Settings:

• Talent list address, for example /voice-talent.
• Talent profile address, for example /voice-talent/profile. Profiles add ?talent=… to it. It must be different from the list’s address.

Use lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens, starting with /. Addresses under /admin, /api, /media, /account, /blog, or /- can’t be used; if you enter one, the page stays at its old address and the plugin’s health check on the Extensions page says why.

Every link the plugin makes follows these addresses: the cards, “Back to talent”, typecast links, and the Featured talent and Talent search blocks. If you change them, add redirects from the old addresses (see Redirects) so old links keep working.

Keep the filter choices up to date

The auditions app doesn’t tell the site which typecasts, locations, and exclusivity options exist. List them yourself in Typecast choices, Location choices, and Exclusivity choices, one per line. Spell each one exactly as it appears in the app. Visitors can only filter by the choices listed here. When the app gets a new typecast, add it here too.

Add talent to other pages

In the editor, add one of these blocks to any page:

• Featured talent shows a few talent cards and a “See all talent” link. You can limit it, for example to British female voices, or show the newest talent first.
• Talent search is a search box that opens the talent list.

When something’s wrong

If the list says “The talent list is unavailable right now”:

1. Open Talents → Connection and choose Test connection. The message explains what’s wrong, for example a missing or wrong key.
2. Check the plugin’s health on the Extensions page.

The site remembers the app’s answers for a few minutes (Keep API answers for, 300 seconds by default). This keeps it fast and under the app’s limit of 120 requests a minute. If the app is down, visitors see the last answers from up to a day before. To show a change from the app straight away, choose Clear saved answers on the Connection screen; pages may still take up to five minutes to update everywhere.

Caution

The plugin can only connect to studiocenterauditions.com (with or without “www.”). If the auditions app moves to a different address, the plugin needs an update first.