Views and Layouts Betas Offer Tight Integration with Popular Themes

   Amir

Announcements

September 21, 2017
31

Yesterday we released betas for Views and Layouts. These layouts feature tight integration with GeneratePress, OceanWP, Astra, Genesis and Divi themes. Now, you can control different features of the themes for each post type.

Imagine you’re building a site for a car dealership. You have custom types for “cars” and “agents”. The same site also has regular pages and a blog.

Your theme allows you to choose the page layout with Customizer options. You can enable sidebars, boxed layout and other options.

But now, you want to have no sidebar for “cars”, a left sidebar for “agents” and a right sidebar for “blog posts”. You also want to disable the featured image for cars, but keep it for agents.

How would you do this today?

This is exactly why we started the theme integration project. With Toolset’s new theme integration, you can control different theme settings individually for each post type. When you design a template or an archive, you’ll see a list of the theme options and you can control them specifically for the template or archive that you’re designing. No more CSS and JS hacks to get rid of elements that you don’t want on a page. No more need to write a child theme, just to control one of the theme’s template files.

The options that you control depend on the theme. Each of these integrated themes comes with a tiny JSON configuration file, which tells Toolset which options it should offer and how they’re stored.

Watch the different videos below to see how it works for popular themes that we’ve already integrated for you.

We need your help to make sure that we haven’t missed anything

In the last couple of months, Toolset team was busy developing the mechanisms that allow our plugins to set theme options. Eventually, Toolset can control any setting found in the Customizer, in the wp_options table and in postmeta (custom fields). This appears to be covering everything in all the themes that we’ve reviewed.

You are much bigger experts than we are at using these themes and building websites. We need your help to make sure that we haven’t missed or mis-understood any of the features that the theme offers.

If you are using any of the themes below, download the Betas and try with the themes. See that you can achieve the fine level of control that you need. If not, tell us and we’ll add it for the production release.

Demo Videos and Support Links

We prepared a quick demo video that shows how each of these themes works with Toolset and how you can set options when designing templates and archives. If you are a Toolset client, join the support threads that we’ve opened for each of the themes and explain there what’s missing. If you’re not yet a client, scroll down and leave a comment.

GeneratePress Integration with Toolset

Right now, we’ve implemented support for GeneratePress theme. We are going to work on the GP Premium add-ons next. If you are using GeneratePress Premium, please join this thread on GP support, tell us and Tom which add-on you need integrated, why and how you’re going to use it to build sites. With this understanding, Toolset team together with GP developer can implement exactly what you need. Add a comment in this post so we can connect between you and your request (and follow-up).

If you are running into problems with the integration, please report in the Toolset support thread about GeneratePress integration.

Astra Integration with Toolset

* For testing, you need to use the development version of Astra. You can get it from Astra dev on Github. Here is a direct link to download Astra development version. Astra devs will release a production version by the time this new version of Toolset goes into production.

Please report issues and tell us about missing features in the Toolset support thread for Astra integration.

OceanWP Integration with Toolset

OceanWP has a number of great add-ons. In this beta, we only handled OceanWP theme and not yet its add-ons. If you are using OceanWP add-ons and want them integrated with Toolset, please scroll down to the comments and add your own. Tell us what you need integrated and how you’re going to use it for sites that you build.

Please report issues and missing features in the Toolset support thread for OceanWP integration.

Genesis Integration with Toolset

Genesis has many great child themes. Right now, in this beta, we’ve integrated with the base Genesis theme. If you need similar integration with Genesis child themes, please add a comment below. Tell us which theme, what features and how you’re going to use it to build client sites. We’ll need you to also contact the author of the child theme and point them to this post, so we can work on this integration together.

Toolset used to need an integration plugin to work with Genesis. This is no longer the case. You only need Genesis theme (plugin any child theme you’re using), Types and Views. You can use Layouts, but it’s optional.

Found a problem or notice a missing feature? Please report in the support thread for Genesis integration.

Divi Integration with Toolset

There are many Divi add-ons out there, but in this beta we only handle the core Divi elements. If we missed elements from Divi core or if you need us to achieve similar integration with an add-on, please add your comment. Tell us which add-on, where we can find it, which of its features you need integrated and how you’re going to use that integration. Then, please reach out also to the other author and point them here. We need to work on this integration together.

Additionally, please note that Divi theme currently does not feature a straight-forward way to disable sidebars on archive pages. While we are investigating to see if this can be implemented as part of the integration, you can try a workaround, if needed. Make sure not to have any widgets inside the “Sidebar” widget area and in the archive’s layout, select the Row as wide as Bootstrap .container option for all rows.

There’s no need for an integration plugin. If you previously used the Toolset-Divi integration plugin, don’t install it when you’re testing now. You only need Divi, Types and Views. You can also use Layout.

To report issues in this integration, please go to the support thread about Divi integration.

Download and try

To download these betas, log-in to your Toolset account, click on Downloads and change the channel to Beta. You will see betas for Views and Layouts. You can use these betas with the production version of Types and with other Toolset plugins.

Remember that this is a beta. It’s intended for testing purposes and not for production sites. With your feedback, we’re trying to reach production readiness in two weeks.

 

Comments 31 Responses

    • Like I wrote in the post, this is something that we need to work on with Tom, from GeneratePress. In the past week, we created the mechanism that allows Toolset to get configuration files from plugins. Technically, this is what’s needed to include GP Premium addons in the theme settings. We hope that GP author will have the time to work with us on this project.

      For your information, we’re already working and close to completion, the compatibility with premium addons of other themes. With a little cooperation from the theme author, it works completely smoothly.

      This is why I’ve asked for more people to join the GP support thread and express their interest. I’m looking forward to seeing this happen.

  2. Integrating with the Genesis framework is good, however not a good practice to edit the framework. I would like to see this working with any Genesis child theme. I guess if StudioPress is on board the other child theme devs will follow. I’ll reach out to a couple I know and have them checkout this post.

    Thanks

    • Our integration is exactly intended so that you don’t need to edit the PHP templates. It works with the parent Genesis theme, as well as with child themes. If you want to see the features of child themes (and only only of Genesis framework) in Toolset customization, we’ll need to work on this with the authors of these themes. Let me know if they are interested and we’ll take it from there.

          • But, this plugin contains additional types of cells for layouts: breadcrumbs, menus, etc. They will not be any more?

            • When we created the old integration plugin, it was only possible to use Layouts to design the entire page. This is why we had to create the speciality cells that Genesis has. That integration plugin is still working for that purpose.

              Today, you can use Layouts to design only the “content” part of the page, so you get the header, menu, footer, etc. from the theme (Genesis). So today, if you build a new site, you don’t need to use that integration plugin. For old sites that you don’t want to touch, keep using that integration plugin and it will work fine. For new sites, I recommend using the updated versions of Toolset plugins and Genesis. Design only the interior of the page with Toolset, control Genesis settings with the new feature that we created now, and you don’t need the integration plugin.

              Does this help?

  3. This will make using Toolset easier. Thanks.

    I tested with Astra Pro, GP Pro, and Genesis. I logged a ticket for a possible issue.

    • That’s odd. Pingdom and our own measurements show good load times on all devices. It’s not perfect, but pretty fast. If pages don’t load at all for you, or take ages, it could be a network or caching issue.

      I suggest to clear all the browser cache and cookies. This way, if the browser is caching an old version which loads incorrect resources, it will fix the problem.

      To try it easily, you can use incognito mode. This is like a totally fresh access to the site.

    • Seems to be a network issue. But the problem persists on BSNL broadband in India. Okay on other networks. Thank you.

      • Thanks for letting us know. It’s most likely an issue with the CDN that we use via Amazon. I wonder, do you reach Amazon.com without problems?

        • Yes. Amazon is fine. But the problem with toolset site comes up occasionally. No problem with other network providers. Happens only with BSNL network. Noticed only because checking the site frequently. Waiting for the many-to-many relationship release. Thank you.

  6. I love the Layout for content template. I’m, now able to use the column layout with my DIVI themed site. It is working grat, but a few things I miss: CSS for just the Layout I’m working on. In the content templates, we can write CSS for just that template, would like the same when using layouts. I would also love to have a place to add functions to call or better yet have the ability to do some basic calculations using fields. Example I have date of birth and would like to know current age. I can do this with a function and a short code, but that requires me to work in several places. Would be nice to do it all in one place.

    Thanks for the great work.

  8. I just started using the beta with GeneratePress and quite like the new integration features.

    Problem though, the “Change how this layout is used” button on the Edit Layout page doesn’t work.
    The “Change layout use” link on the Layouts page (where they’re all listed) works though.

    • Hi Darryl,

      I am Riccardo, Layouts developer, I personally can’t reproduce the behaviour of the “Change how this layout is used” button you describe, I am going to contact you directly to try to help with it.

      Thanks!

  9. A lot is heard about gutenberg page builder coming to wordpress with version 5.0. Seems custom fields and metaboxes will be affected. Will it affect sites built with toolset? Anything in the direction?

    • Same here. There’s a lot of talk about Gutenberg, but not a lot of hard facts.

      From what we know until now, Gutenberg developers understand that they need to offer support for metaboxes. They are working on other subjects right now, which are also important to the project.

      The current plan is for Gutenberg to automatically work on posts and pages, but not on custom types.

      We’ll make sure that existing sites don’t suffer when Gutenberg is initially released inside WordPress. If Gutenberg editor will have support for metaboxes, we’ll use it – even if it means a lot of changes from our side. If Gutenberg doesn’t have this support, we’ll need to use a filter (which is already implemented in Gutenberg) to re-register it and keep using the current TinyMCE.

      Let’s wait and see.

      • I am seeing much talk of the Gutenberg project, but something I always wanted to see is a proper editor for coding with colour coding etc. as opposed to the rather lame offering of the TinyMCE in this regard, where nesting and tab for indent is not possible. Not sure if anybody attempted this for WordPress but I see sites like CodePen have managed to pull of some sort of implementation.