People are divided into categories (faculty, students, staff, ...) and into research areas. Each person has a short personal page containing contact info, a short bio, and a headshot. The headshot image is stored at /www/apache/includes/img/staff/uid.{jpeg,gif,png}, where uid may or may not be their TU username. The bio is stored in the text file /www/apache/includes/text/uid.txt.
Research areas correspond EXACTLY to the subfolders of /research/groups. The research area name corresponding to subfolder /research/groups/xxx is the contents of the file /research/groups/xxx/.title. These areas also appear in the "Join" page.
All contact info is stored in the xlsx spreadsheet /www/apache/includes/data/people.xlsx. Data uploaded by people via the "Join the Web Site" page under Toolbox is stored in this spreadsheet. One can also add users manually to the spreadsheet. In either case they appear instantly on the web site. In the spreadsheet, rows starting with a # are ignored.
To add a person's headshot to any page, include the line
<!--#include virtual='/cgi-bin/get_avatar?email=uid' -->
at the location where you want the image to appear, where uid.* is the name of the image file. The image will appear left-justified. This displays the image iff the image file /www/apache/includes/img/staff/uid.{jpeg,gif,png} exists. If uid is the name of an active Temple account, the image is displayed as a clickable link to their home page. Users may upload their image by clicking on "Join" at the top.
To add a person's blurb to any page, include the line
<!--#include virtual='/cgi-bin/get_blurb?email=uid' -->
at the location where you want the blurb to appear.