New training courses on how to build directory and membership sites

   Agnes Bury

Announcements

July 21, 2016
20

Toolset includes all necessary features to build a custom membership or directory site including front-end forms for submitting new items and managing user accounts.

The challenge is how to put all the pieces together.

We just published two comprehensive tutorials that will help you connect the dots and compile the process of building a custom membership/directory site. Also, new features are on their way.

Check what’s in for you.

New tutorial on building directory sites

Visit the tutorial on building directory sites to learn:

building directory sites

  1. How to setup the custom post types, fields and taxonomy for a directory site
  2. How to create a custom search for the directory.
  3. How to build front-end forms for adding and editing items
  4. How to allow user registration and account management
  5. How to charge fees for content submission or registration

Visit the tutrial page

For your convenience, you can find this and other tutorials in the site’s navigation, under Documentation->Learn Toolset.

directory sites tutorial in navigation

New training course

CRED Training Course
CRED Training Course

Directory and membership sites rely heavily on front-end forms for content submission and user registration.

CRED lets you build these forms.

If you’re new to CRED, we invite you to try the new CRED Training Course. There, you will learn the basics of front-end forms, as well as advanced subjects, which you’ll need for real sites.

Here is what’s waiting for you in CRED course:

  • Front-end forms for adding and editing new ads
  • Introduction to generic fields and conditional groups
  • Setting automatic expiration for ads
  • Front-end forms for adding and editing user accounts
  • Custom login form
  • Custom “My account” page
  • How to display different content for the logged-in users
  • Access management

You will learn how to combine Types, Views, CRED and Access features to build a solid foundation for any membership site.

Coming soon

New features supporting custom login page

In Views 2.1 we added a new shortcode that allows you to add the Logout link to your page. After signing out, the user will be redirected to a custom page.

Custom login form - new features are coming

Our developers are enhancing the Views Login form shortcode to redirect you to  your custom page on login failure.

The upcoming Views release will also bring a new Lost password shortcode. It will redirect you to a custom Password Recovery page fitting the overall design of your site.

Say goodbye to the ugly WordPress default screens for login and password recovery pages.

New CRED tutorials

We are going to enhance the series of CRED tutorials with new ones.

What’s on our todo list:

  1. Adding hidden fields to CRED forms
  2. Building front-end forms for adding related Post Types
    • Forms for one-to-many relationship between two Post Types
    • Forms for many-to-many relationships between Post Types and Users
  3. Charging fees for content submissions (adding featured ads)
  4. Charging fees to register users

If you think there are more missing CRED tutorials, please let us know.

Leave your feedback

How do you like the new features and learning materials?

You use Toolset for real projects so you know better than we what’s needed for real memberships and directory sites. We will appreciate any feedback.

 

Comments 20 Responses

  1. Simply awesome guys, I will be using all of this in my new community membership site – and the reason I invested in Toolset. It is so good that you keep this moving on, and the recent integration with Beaver Builder is part of the deal for me – fantastic!

    • Thanks Iain,
      great to hear you like it and you are going to implement some of the topics covered in your new community membership site. In the next series, we will cover more topics for membership sites, for example, there will be new, step-by-step tutorials how to use Toolset to charge fees for content submission and membership, including renewals.

    • Thanks Agnes,

      a question on login, can we include social login via Facebook etc, that is becoming more popular and a definite requirement,

      Cheers, Iain

      • I’ve never tried it but plugins such as “Nextend Facebook Connect” allow you to insert the “Connect with Facebook” login button to any page. Toolset itself doesn’t include such an option.

  2. Perfect timing as I’m in the middle of creating a directory site with Toolset now. I do have a questions though, are there plans for integrating Views with the Relevanssi plugin?

  3. This arrived just in the moment that I needed the most. I saw the email and immediately click on it. I will be implementing.
    Also for me the new integrations on Views are essential, any ETA?
    Thanks!

    • Views 2.2 will include integration with Beaver Builder and Relevanssi. These integrations are for completely different purposes. BB will allow easier editing of Content Templates. Relevanssi integration will improve the accuracy of text searches and allow to perform text searches in custom fields.

      Both are included in Views 2.2. We’re planning to complete the development around the end of the month and then we need another 2 weeks for testing.

  4. Hi Agnus,

    I am really glad that this has been released and there is further to come.

    A question about which theme to use, Toolset Starter theme, or the Beaver Builder theme. I recently purchased Beaver Builder as a result of the integration work that Toolset is doing, and I have found it to be really quite good for my level of ability. I don’t have the skills in HTML or CSS, beyond recognizing what they are and a small level of application. So I know that I will be running into little issues throughout the development of a site.

    I am wanting to develop a directory site for healthcare professionals. Which theme should I use, Toolset or Beaver? A straight forward answer would be appreciated.

    Always appreciative of for your help.

    • Hi Chris,
      you can use any theme. What I would do, if I were in your shoes (meaning having limited HTML/CSS skills). I would get started with a basic WordPress theme (Twenty Sixteen, Twenty Fifteen or any popular free theme) and focus on creating relevant views, templates, and front-end forms required for a directory site and make them working, not caring much whether they look nice.

      Then, I would play around and switch themes to see how my output changes. And I would pick the theme that requires the least CSS adjustments.

      I wouldn’t use the Toolset Starter theme since it requires adding a lot of custom CSS.

      There are the Beave Builder theme and the Beaver Builder plugin. Feel free to check how your views and CRED forms look when displayed with the Beave Builder theme. I’ve never tried it.

      If you have any questions about using CRED to build a directory site, please use the CRED support page. I will reply there.

      • Thanks Agnus, I’ll see how I go with the Beaver Builder theme. I quite like Beaver Builder. However, I will wait for the release of the Views update sometime in the next few weeks.

        Cheers
        Chris

    • Do you have any specific case in mind? Toolset plugins work with the WordPress Multisite mode.

      • Hi Anges,
        thanks for getting back to me, last time I looked Toolset did not work with multisite so I am very happy to hear that it now does.

        I use Buddypress in multi sites so I am looking to use Toolset in a similar way, any help, reference or tutorials would be great.

        Thanks again

        • All our training and reference sites run on WordPress Multisite:
          http://discover-wp.com/site-templates/

          All Toolset plugins are used there, including CRED, Layouts and Access.

          When we test these sites we do run across some issues that work fine in a single WP, but then we raise tickets for our developers and they always fix them. I would recommend you to do the same if something is not working, raise a ticket on our support forum.

          • Thanks again Agnes,
            Can you point me to something that relates to multi sites please
            Additionally, working with Buddypress

            thanks again

  6. I’d be very interested to see more information or perhaps a case study on using toolset with the WP REST API!

  7. Was there a new Membership or Directory Reference Site that was to accompany this new training course?

    • Hi David,
      we have a complete version of the site that you build when following the CRED course. It other words, a site showing the outcome of the CRED course, which is a small membership site based on Ads.

      Unfortunately, this site isn’t available to public yet since an issue in the Access plugin for WordPress Multisite (our reference sites are running on WP Multisite) and we are waiting for the official releases of the new version.

      Once the site is released it will be available here:
      http://discover-wp.com/site-templates/

      as the second to last item (right after “CRED tutorials – training”). We will also link to it from the tutorials.
      Sorry for the inconvenience.