I'm trying to create a more comprehensive User Profile with an assortment of field types. These will be used in various ways throughout the site, rather than just being displayed in one spot. I'm having difficulty understanding why I would use the User Fields and Forms to achieve this rather than Custom Posts and Fields?
It appears to me that User fields are much more difficult and restrictive to use/display than Post fields - for instance, they can't be displayed/filtered as a view, don't appear to have a content template available to them, and have to be inserted on a field-by-field basis with the Fields and Text block.
This Toolset lesson seems to agree - it suggests using Custom Posts for extended user profiles.
https://toolset.com/lesson-placement/lesson-placements-1622969-1929573/
Am I missing something? Could you succinctly describe some examples of when and why I'd want to use User Fields rather than Custom Post fields? Or, more simply, will I lose any functionality if I just ignore User Fields and forms and work exclusively with Custom Posts and Fields?
Thanks!
Hello and thank you for contacting Toolset support.
I believe that you have understood the limits of user fields vs post fields:
- Users are not filterable using views.
- Users are not displayed using content templates.
- Users cannot be connected to other data on the site, especially if you will be using Toolset relationships. (Except the author field, any post in WordPress has an author, which is a user on the system)
The article that you referred to is, basically, our suggestion to overcome those limitations. Because, theoretically, almost everything is possible with custom code. But that's not what Toolset was created for on the first base, right!
So, personally, I would suggest using posts to represent users, especially, if you need to have searches, relationships, and custom fields that should be displayed without custom code.
I hope this answers your question. Let me know if you have any doubts or further questions.
Thanks! I'm glad that I have understood it properly. I'll just ignore user fields and forms then.
Thanks! I'm glad that I have understood it properly. I will just ignore user fields and forms then.
