Our current templates and field types are pretty basic, and so we plan to add some functionality to make them a lot more flexible. This should make it really easy to create more flexible content structures, and also save some time when you have the same kinds of structure used on multiple items in your project.
The idea is to make it possible to create custom components out of a group of fields (or even a single field), and then have these accessible in a component library so they can be quickly added to items on the fly. This means you could have a component that's used inside templates and custom structures, and which can be easily updated from a single place. Which should save a bunch of time!
We're also keen to make it possible to say that a component should be repeatable on an item. This should be useful for things like galleries, or lists of things, where you're not sure how many you need from the outset.
Finally, we're also keen to review our field types themselves, and look into more specific field types to support more structured content. Also just improving the validation on fields, so you could say a field is required, or has to include a certain format of content.
This is in the very early stages of planning, so please let us know your thoughts.
For my use case, we just need repeatable fields. Most websites I build have worked this way
Another field type that would be useful for us is a button/CTA field. As a web agency, this is something we encounter frequently. Currently we denote a button with brackets (for example: [LEARN MORE]), but we're concerned that this may not be clear to all of our clients.
UniSuper has several disclosure documents that share identical content. Can GatherContent allow a user/owner to manage a block of text that is linked to one or many documents? So that when the text is updated and published, the updated text appears in the related/linked docs?
If this was introduced, then it would save the users a considerable amount of time, reduce risk of errors and increase confidence in the documents.
This used to be a feature! Often pages have repeatable elements that need to be repeated with minor changes. Saves a lot of time.
We've been waiting for something like this to integrate with more modular templates.
A more flexible approach to content would be ideal as we build modern products. The key requirements for me are the updates are compatible with Advanced Custom Fields _Repeater_ and _Flexible Content_ fields as well as the native WordPress Gutenberg blocks.
The GC platform is fantastic, but it is painful to try and mimic current WP functionality within in a way that is easy to use.
Nick Tucker
The key omissions would be the option to re-use blocks of content across multiple ‘pages’. Without that saving, then there isn’t the value in the system. I produce sets of content where an opening paragraph of a 100 word summary is the page description for the web version, and the list of links at the end of the long, medium and short versions are nearly the same but have some omissions in the shorter versions, the slug names for each bit of web content is the same first three words then a final work identifying the length, etc.
Being able to drop in ‘components’ or whatever you’d like to call them would elevate the system to a much more effective level for me. As it is I’m looking to employ a student / assistant to do this grunt work.
It would be great to be able to group text areas (i.e. headline and body copy area as one unit while still allowing them to be their own text boxes with unique character counts)
Sometimes on a template I have to repeat a grouping of multiple fields, for example; Benefit Icon #1, Benefit Headline #1, Benefit Body Copy #1, CTA Text #1. Then repeat the same set of fields for #2, #3, etc. I would LOVE it if I could grab multiple fields at once and duplicate them, and move them as a group down the page. Having this ability would save SO MUCH time. Please consider adding this feature!
I agree this would be useful for content managed as a database (we have a lot of this), but just a caution ... please don't make it harder to do the current, simple templates. We need those too.