ACF & Enfold – Post template builder?

Hey Arend,
Sorry for the very late reply, I believe our new version will help you in this direction. We are introducing new features Theme Extensions & Custom Element Templates, I don’t believe we have a post about this yet, but this is the option text:

Custom Element Templates
Create your custom ALB element templates from existing ALB elements with fixed styling and content. You can use these custom elements as base for your elements when creating your pages. Changes to these custom element templates will be used in the elements based on these templates.
Activate and select who is allowed to create and edit custom element templates

So I believe this helps with the issue of your client’s editing elements, I don’t use ACF, but I believe that you will be able to enter act with the content just as you currently can with ACF.
We expect the update to be available soon, and then you can examine it to see if it helps.

Best regards,
Mike

Hi,
Thanks, I feel like I get the sense of what you are saying, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
So as I understand, ACF would be the raw data (text, posts), which clients can edit or create, ALB would be the design that clients can not touch. Perfect 👍
So my thinking is that this sounds like the ACF should be a custom post type (CPT) so it is the content, and ALB would be the design.
My thinking is that the default WP “post” is at the top of the dataset, within the WP structure, it is meant to be the raw data, and WP gives the ability to create a new “post” type, and from my understanding, as a non-user, ACF is custom fields within any post type, so if the “post” is the top of the dataset, ACF is one step down adding content to the “post” type.
Currently, within the theme you can lock the ALB and lock it from other admins, so the layout can not be changed, but perhaps the best approach would be to make the clients an “Author” so they can only edit their own posts and no pages or layouts.
Or you can create a new user role with custom abilities.
So I’m thinking that a combination of CPT & ACF & user roles is the solution?

Here is a post about the new feature above, I don’t think it applies to your request, but I figured I’d link to it since I brought it up earlier.

Best regards,
Mike

Hi,
Thanks, I was trying to point out above that I believe “posts” are at the top, so there is not a “level up from posts”.
I believe the ACF data is stored in the “posts” in the database
Glad that you found the Toolset plugin, this has been around for a long time, before Gutenberg, so I’m sure it still works with the Classic Editor, if that is what you are using. While I have heard of Toolset, and seen other clients using it with Enfold, I don’t use it so I have limited knowledge of it.
But I believe you were pointing to the video because it demonstrates how datasets can be picked and used within the Toolset page builder, and this is nice, but I would point out that what the Toolset is doing is creating a CPT and displaying it’s “posts”, while they are called “Team Members” they are actually “posts” in the WP structure.
This is the same as the “portfolio” items in Enfold.
I point this out because the relationship between current “posts” and how the Enfold elements display them is the same.
The ACF plugin does the same function as the built-in WP custom fields, just much nicer.
So what I’m trying to say is that with your request to “build one central template that gets filled by the entered data in a post […] so the client(s) cannot mess up the design”
is the same process as how WP posts are displayed on a page built with the ALB, once the page is created it is a “template” that doesn’t ever need to be edited again, editing the posts changes the content.
For example, many years ago I helped set up a homepage with 3 “blocks” of content, each block was actually a post in the backend that they would edit, but never the actual “homepage”.
So I’m thinking that you can use the ACF to setup a backend “form”, which is actually a post backend that looks like your form, then this post is shown by the ALB on the frontend.
If you want to create a CPT so the word “post” in the backend is custom to your site, like “widgets” or “portfolios”, you can do that, and you can register it with Enfold so the CPT can be picked in the elements.

Best regards,
Mike

Hi,
Sorry, anyways this is some good info and I submitted this to the dev team and I will update as I hear back from them.

Best regards,
Mike