To get the direct contact with someone in an upper level I suggest to use this form:
https://toolset.com/need-help-toolset/
Please always try to split your questions, doubts or issues that you experience with Toolset and want to report in different threads.
This helps us, and you as well as other users, to solve the issues quicker and later find solutions to them quicker.
Now, let me reply to all technical aspects I can help with below.
I "blockquote" sentences from your opening comment, so it is easy to relate my answers.
It seems that it's built "For Engineers, by Engineers." In fact, on the website, it proudly promotes that many of OTG employees are Ph.D. in CS or equivalent.
Please do not take that statement by the letter.
I remember that in the past I asked my superior if this was not too "strong" of a statement since I am neither PhD, CS, or even have any official education in any IT related profession.
(I am an exception, in this team).
This does not mean I do not understand my work.
Very long personal self-teaching (thru self-hosted websites) and adequate training in this enterprise, later on, made me an expert of Toolset and WordPress.
I do though understand what you mean.
Again, as a personal anecdote, I once was (client) User of Toolset as well.
My learning curve was immense.
It took me literally months to figure out how to use it 100%.
My biggest challenge was Views. This may not be the same for everyone.
This is because Toolset is, as you say, a beast.
Imagine, it allows you to do practically everything you can imagine, from the WP Admin.
Forms, Types, Queries, Security, Layouts, all in one.
If you imagine how the learning process is to achieve those things without Toolset, you will consider Toolset's learning curve short and easy.
We continuously try to improve the UI, and we are open to suggestions mentioning particular edits that could improve the experience.
Often, we receive a report that "this is not good".
It is then challenging to implement something "better" if we do not know what the users particularly would consider better.
So it is constructive if we know what you would want instead.
If you see things that you, in particular, would want to change, you are welcome to report this to us (one issue a ticket) thru our Support Forums.
You will be assisted by a Supporter, who will try to:
- provide another solution for the same goal (solve issue immediately)
- if there are problems to be addressed in the plugin, they will as well inform the Developers in regard (escalate)
- if there are suggestions or feature requests, they will as well pursue the above first two goals first, usually.
This means, you will eventually not see an immediate effect upon your requests but will receive technical assistance how to solve it, and we will focus on your claims so to settle them in future.
We also perform usability tests where we involve designers, users and supporters, to precisely test the usability from a user point of view, and it is true - we have lots of room to improve.
I can guarantee that "ease of use" is a significant point in our development, nowadays more than in the past.
Right now, the process of creating custom fields, taxonomies, relationships, and all of the other Toolset functionalities seems ... clunky.
Have you given a try to the new Toolset Beta series available in your download area?
I believe you will see several pleasant changes in this aspect.
Please let me know what you think in regard, we value the feedback.
MY ASK: Please take a hard look at revamping Toolset's User Experience and gear it towards NON-engineers? I want to see Toolset grow and believe in its future, but to gain User Adoption, your engineering team needs to be paired with some World-Class UX / UI / Frontend Designer / JS experts and rethink/unpack the whole Toolset experience from the ground up. ?
I 100% agree.
We have workflows for this in place and often discuss issues and solutions from both the points of perspective.
Often, first a technical version gets implemented, then it gets UI refined.
This is why several things in Toolset "still" are a bit... technical.
We work harder on UI lately and improved a lot, but there is still a lot of work to come.
Relationships - One of the things I've been using A LOT of is the Pods Bi-directional relationships, and I think it's extremely powerful.
Toolset Type's primary focus is exactly that.
Please check out the new beta for this as well.
The Relationships you can create with Toolset are now entirely powered with all possible connection types.
I hope Toolset will be able to extend that as well to make it _EASY_ to create customised Post layouts.
This should be reasonably easy already.
If you have suggestions for this, I suggest you open a specific ticket for this particular aspect.
Currently, You can create Post layouts, or templates, with Views or Layouts.
Usually, if your theme is not integrated, those will replace the_content() part, just as the page builders do as well.
We also offer integration with several powerful page builders:
https://toolset.com/2017/12/how-to-use-toolset-with-different-page-builders/
Layouts & Loops - I think this is a great feature in Toolset, but similar to the above, a better UI/UX experience (or even WYSIWYG) that we can use to create advanced functionalities like Loops, which integrates with BB / Elementor / TA either natively (preferred), or via shortcodes would be amazing and would make a powerful dev combination.
I am not sure to follow here.
If this is about particular features in Toolset Layouts, I again suggest to report them in a single ticket (same if it is for Views Loops).
You can already use Beaver Builder and other page builders (Elementor is in the process) in Loops or Content Templates.
In Layouts not, because well, you also will not drive two Ferraris at one time 🙂
Layouts is already a page builder, hence 2 of them will not work "together" or "inside each other".
I am not sure if I correctly understood the issue here - please let me know if not.
Conditional Logic - Would love to know, are their ways to do things like:
a.) If/then/else logic
b.) Ability to do things like Count using WP Query (e.g. count the # of Posts, count the # of CPTs, count the # of custom taxonomies, etc.)
These are two different things.
One is conditional display; the other is data manipulation.
With Toolset Views you can conditionally display things using several approaches, the main ones being:
- conditional HTML: https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/conditional-html-output-in-views/
- Access controls: https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/access-control-texts-inside-page-content/
This is not exactly an "if then else" logic, but with HTML conditional you do not need a "then else". All you do is add "if / if not", that is enough to build such logic.
To count the # of Posts, count the # of CPTs, count the # of custom taxonomies, etc., this is data manipulation.
You get something, do something with, but in between, you need to change that data.
You calculate (PHP calculation operators) and eventually then save (update some post meta) or return (in a shortcode to finally show things or not, which is again conditional display).
This is not possible with Toolset, even if there is a feature request filed to allow precisely that, it is as well not on a high priority yet.
This is because it defies the purpose of Toolset which is to allow to create and display content - not to perform mathematical operations or figure as a "raw data provider".
I upvoted that request for you, giving it more weight in our consideration process.
For now, this needs to be done with a mix of custom code and Toolset features.
Are you familiar with this?
If not, please open a new ticket requesting an example on the topic, so you can see how this is done - we cannot craft a full custom code but we can give you comprehensive examples and documentation links.
I hope I was able to shed some light and give helpful tips.
Please acknowedlge that every feedback is considered and will flow into our process of building the plugins.
Please let me know if I missed something!
