Toolset 1.6.12 – Improved Levels of Control, Compatibility, and Speed

   Kathy Banach

Announcements

February 13, 2024
21

Toolset 1.6.12 brings you improvements in access control and compatibility with SEO plugins, learning management systems, and event plugins for WordPress. Experience smoother and faster performance across your site.

Upgraded Access Control Mechanism

Having control over who can do what on your WordPress site is just as important as locking certain doors to prevent unauthorized access. It allows you to define who can see, edit, or delete specific post types. This is especially handy if you have a team with various user roles, or if you want to offer different access levels to your guests.

The latest version, Toolset Access 2.9.0, introduces a revamped mechanism for assigning capabilities to post types. This enhancement, while invisible in your daily workflow, really improves the reliability and stability of the assignment process.

Toolset Access 2.9.0 also resolves an issue preventing certain user roles from seeing or editing WooCommerce orders. Whether you’re running an online marketplace or a boutique shop, WooCommerce order management is at the heart of your operation. Control over who can view, edit, and manage orders or refunds lets you better interact with customers and manage their purchases.

The update gives your users the exact access they need—no more, no less—making sure everyone can do their job.

We’ve rigorously tested Toolset Access 2.9.0 on our site, packed with custom post types, third-party plugins, and custom capabilities. Everything worked great.
However, in very rare cases, you may experience an issue where permissions for a custom role don’t apply as expected and revert to those of the original role. This issue may only potentially happen for post types managed by Toolset Access, specifically if the post type’s slug is very different from its singular and plural labels.

If this unlikely scenario affects you, revert to a previous version of Toolset Access. This is safe and won’t impact your data. Then, contact our Support team for a solution.

Smoother LearnDash Integration

Setting up online courses should be as simple as organizing a physical classroom. Your educational materials need to be easy to access by students, just as they should be in your LearnDash admin area.

Toolset Access 2.9.0 stabilizes the LearnDash Dashboard, preventing items from moving positions unexpectedly. By smoothing out this integration, we’re helping you keep your focus on delivering top-notch educational content.

Seamless SEO with SeoPress Pro

SEO is the backbone of your site’s visibility on the internet. Using SeoPress Pro, you’ve got a powerful tool at your fingertips with features that you need to rank higher in search engines.

By improving how Toolset Access 2.9.0 works with SeoPress Pro, we’re ensuring that your SEO efforts are as effective as possible. Now, you can access the Redirections page and other SEO tasks without any hitches, making it easier to:

  • Get better SEO rankings
  • Access all the features you need to optimize your content for both Google and visitors
  • Lead more visitors to your site

Speedy Performance

Toolset Access 2.9.0 optimizes the localization process, reducing repeated checks for the same set of strings when verifying user capabilities.

This might seem like a small tweak, but its impact is far-reaching. The call to check capabilities occurs in numerous places across your site. As a result, many Toolset-powered sites will experience a noticeable boost in performance, ensuring a smoother, more responsive experience for both you and your visitors.

Better Compatibility with Modern Events Calendar Lite

Creating events on your WordPress site is a great way to engage with your audience, whether for webinars, workshops, or social gatherings. However, the design of your event pages is just as important as the event content.

With Toolset Blocks 1.6.12 and Toolset Views 3.6.12, we’ve improved compatibility with the Modern Events Calendar Lite plugin. Now, the designs of your event pages can be as engaging and appealing as the events themselves.

Other Updates

After this initial release, we rolled out some minor updates with Toolset Blocks 1.6.14, Toolset Views 3.6.14, and Toolset Layouts 2.6.16. These updates address compatibility issues with Beaver Builder, fix the editor’s preview functionality for “Reverse Columns” in the Grid block, and resolve an error when editing content templates on PHP 8.x.

Toolset 1.6.12 includes other updates that contribute to a more stable, compatible, and user-friendly Toolset:

  • Toolset Forms 2.6.20 improves notifications for forms translated with WPML. It makes sure the right notifications are sent, no matter what language a user submits the form in.
  • Toolset Forms 2.6.20 improves compatibility with Elementor, allowing you to use WPML to translate  Toolset Form widgets in Elementor templates.
  • Toolset Blocks 1.6.12, Toolset Views 3.6.12, and Toolset Forms 2.6.20 improve compatibility with PHP 8.2.

See the changelog for Toolset Access 2.9.0

See the changelog for Toolset Blocks 1.6.12

See the changelog for Toolset Views 3.6.12

See the changelog for Toolset Forms 2.6.20

How to Update to Toolset 1.6.12

As with all of our new versions, we are releasing Toolset 1.6.12 gradually. You can get it from your Plugins page before it reaches your site, but we recommend you wait until it’s available to you.

Learn more about our gradual release process.

We Want to Hear From You

What’s your next big website project, and how can the updates to Toolset help you achieve it? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

 

Comments 21 Responses

  1. Thanks for you hard work… These are great updates and it’s always nice to see performance improvements as well.

    Does this update allow for automatically adding posts to a post group based on a category? And how much of access can be managed from the front end?

    Thanks!

    • Hi Joe,
      Thanks for your comment!

      This update to Toolset Access shifts to a new mechanism for assigning capabilities to post types. Instead of relying on labels, it now uses post type slugs. This change makes the process more reliable, stable, and compatible with third-party plugins. It doesn’t automatically add posts to Access groups based on categories. Is this a feature you requested or opened a ticket about?

      When it comes to Toolset Access, it lets you grant privileges to user roles or to specific users. You can manage these access rules and set the right permissions for your site from the backend. However, if you’re interested in knowing how much of the front-end Toolset Access can manage, it comes down to reading capabilities. So if you have a membership site for example, you can choose what to display to users who don’t have read access to content, like a 404 page or a different template. You can also control read-access by setting certain pages or parts of pages to be accessible by logged in members.

      • Thanks Kathy for your reply,

        I’m glad to hear that Access will be more stable and reliable – that’ll definitely make Toolset more competitive. I did a lot of research into content restriction a while back for a project…my project was an edge case thing so I created a custom solution (with some help from your support!), but the main advantage of other plugins like restrict content pro or other membership plugins seemed to be the capacity to set up content grouping which could then be managed by front-end site managers – e,g by using native WP categories etc. Anyway, I didn’t request it as my project wasn’t the norm but I keep an eye on updates like this as I’d always prefer using things that are ready out of the box for reliability.

        Thanks again

  2. Looking forward to this update! I often use Modern Events Calendar so this will be helpful.

    It sure would be great to get a big update to forms I use them a lot but they don’t live up to their potential. When a site has dozens of forms, having to address issues with code snippets is not efficient :
    • Should be able to set required fields easily
    • Description fields for custom fields should come up as tooltips
    • Many to many relationships should be easy to manage (add edit and remove)
    • Better control of uploaded media would also be useful

    Still a big Toolset fan looking forward to more improvements

    • Hi Ian,

      Thanks for taking the time to comment and share your feedback! Have you opened a Support ticket about these improvements to Toolset Forms? This lets our developers see exactly what you need, prioritize changes, and keep you in the loop.

      • I open tickets on an as needed basis. Would love to see you guys implement a suggested features section on the site with a voting system. Some other tools do this like Modern Events Calendar and it seems to work quite well.

        • Thanks, Ian. We’re very much open to feature requests submitted via our support forum, but I’ll pass your suggestion about the features section with a voting system on to our development team.

  3. Interesting updates.

    I see all these third party integrations and wonder, as a Toolset customer for many years, why we don’t see some simple additions so that relationships, repeaters and meta filters work natively in Bricks Builder loops?

    It’s not even a UI request, just a coding solution for a builder that is getting a lot of attention. If ACF and Meta box can cater for many certainly Toolset can go the extra mile.

    Basically too much dependence on the block editor where things don’t flow that nicely.

    • Hi Stephen,
      Thanks for bringing your suggestion about Bricks Builder to our attention. While we can’t make any promises about new feature implementations or timelines, I’d encourage you to submit this feature request in our support forum. We’re always open to suggestions that can enhance how Toolset works for you.

        • Hi Cathy,

          Looks like I already did via support and was told that Toolset doesnt’t want to do integrations with third party solutions anymore… which is a bit contradictroty based on the integrations listed in the post above.

          Not a good look for a user who paid subscriptions since about 2016 and has built many sites with a lot of Toolset integrations over the years and is now left snookered by a lack of interest on the part of Toolset. As I said it’s a coding requirement for three small things (repeaters, relationships and filtering based on field metadata) not a full blown UI request.

          There used to be a feature request area. It deosn’t seem to exist anymore.

          • Hi Stephen,

            We’re sorry to hear that you’re disappointed and really do value the support and feedback from long-time users like you. It’s clear you’ve put a lot into your sites using Toolset. The integrations we’ve mentioned in the post are currently being maintained and enhanced. Deciding not to pursue every third-party integration is difficult, but necessary for us to manage our resources effectively. However, please know that the legacy version of Toolset is stable, and we’re committed to its ongoing maintenance.

            • Thanks Kathy,

              The conceit that Toolset is stable and will recieveongoing maintenance has some merit but misses the point that it is in some ways it falling behind.

              I note the following relating to Modern Events

              “With Toolset Blocks 1.6.12 and Toolset Views 3.6.12, we’ve improved compatibility with the Modern Events Calendar Lite plugin. Now, the designs of your event pages can be as engaging and appealing as the events themselves.”

              That sounds more than a simple maintanence release and more like adressing users requests to have more control over the design of events templates?

              Not withstanding this, I have heard back from Bricks support and they are pointing to some are of coding that may make it feasible to implement the three small but most important aspects of querying loops from within the Bricks builder itself.

              I reiterate this woildn’t rely on any UI design on the part of Toolset. In adition it enhances the workflow of dynamically laying our results, using the Bricks UI, whereby one doesn’t need to go to a Views/Blocks interrface. In addition to this complete styling can be caried out in the Bricks builder itself. In many instance users wouldn’t even need to install Views/Block. They would just need Types installed.

              I will do a bit more research and revet back to support.

    • Hi Carletto,
      Thank you for letting us know – I will pass this information on to our development team. If you have not opened a ticket about this issue yet, could I please ask you to open one? This will allow our Support team to investigate and provide you with a solution.

  5. Hello Guys,

    in 2015/16 I purchased lifetime lisence. Frankly, since I never used toolset at all. Reason: at the beginning toolset was just to complicated to use (esspecially views). Later, when the Block builder module was embedded … I struggeld how to use this with Elementor PRO.

    Meanwhile Toolset is stopped to put any efforts into 3rd-party plugins. Also, since then also missing updates to documentation.

    Therefore, it would be wonderful if you could at least provide some help “when and how to use Toolset block” combined with Elementor PRO.

    Looking forward hearing from you.
    Regards,
    Beatris

    • Hi Beatris,
      Thanks for your comment!
      Have you seen our guide to using Toolset with Elementor? It shows how you can use the two plugins together and provides many examples along the way.
      Are there any other specific documentation updates you’d be interested in seeing? Our content team is open to your feedback so we can better prepare tutorials and documentation pages that are useful to you and other Toolset users.

    • Hi there,
      Is there anything specific you’re having issues with when trying to use Toolset with Rank Math? If you’re facing challenges in using any Rank Math features with Toolset plugins, you’re welcome to share the details in our Support forum. Our team be able to investigate and guide you accordingly.

      • What I mean is that it is not possible to occupy shortcode or custom field in the meta description by occupying Rank Math (title or description). Which is a bit strange given the popularity of the plugin