I am trying to: connect 2 hardwares to each other for showing compatibility regarding each other.
When trying to define a new relationship, I chose hardware custom post type as the First Post Type, but then I couldn't choose hardware as the Second Post Type. It gave me this error: Connecting posts of the same type is not supported yet.
Why is this happening? Do you have any workarounds?
Please help because if I don't create relationships between same post type items, the ToolSet plugin becomes almost useless.
(Our categories are so vast so we decided to only create custom post for the general terms: Hardware and Software. And then categorize them with various custom taxonomies like Hardware Category: Printer, Display,... and Software Category: Email, Browser,...)
Hi, it's not possible to use Toolset's post relationships to connect items in the same post type. If you'd like to see that feature added to post relationships, I encourage you to submit your request here: https://toolset.com/home/contact-us/suggest-a-new-feature-for-toolset/
I don't have a workaround available that will help you use Toolset's post relationships this way, but I can explain a couple of ways you can use custom taxonomies to relate posts in the same post type. One is easy, the other is difficult (but more flexible).
Easy way: create one generic term for each group of related posts, then assign that term to all the related posts in wp-admin. For example, if you want to link 3 posts that all discuss Toolset, you can create a term "Toolset" in your custom taxonomy, and assign that term to all 3 posts.
Hard way: create a term for each post and use that term to link to other posts. For example, let's say you want to link Post 1, Post 2, and Post 3 to each other. You would create three terms in the taxonomy: post-1, post-2, post-3. The slugs of the terms should be identical to the post slugs. Then edit each post in wp-admin and add the corresponding posts' terms. In Post 1, you would add post-2 and post-3 terms. In Post 2, you would add post-1 and post-3 terms. In Post 3, you would add post-1 and post-2 terms.
Then you can display a list of related posts in the single post template. You would create a View of Posts, filtered by taxonomy term slug. Use the slug of the current post to define the term filter. In other words when you visit Post 1 on the front-end, the View will show all posts that have the post-1 term assigned.
Let me know if you have questions about either taxonomy approach.
Dear Christian,
Both solutions will make a mess out of taxonomies in long term. Considering the huge number of products we are going to cover as well as articles related to these products, both solutions are not suitable for our case.
I know using Toolset is purely dependent on customer's intelligence (for implementing the best possible system) but being able to relate posts from same custom post type is a must-have option of Relationship plugin in my opinion. Putting it up vote is not going to work because most customers (like me) will face lack of this feature in the middle of setting up their websites, which means it will force them to find other workarounds on their own instead of waiting for the option being added to Toolset.
Thank you.
The only other approach I can think of basically copies the taxonomy approach but with custom fields. It's messy and unmanageable for large data sets as well, though. Toolset may not be the right tool for managing these intra-post-type relationships in an effective, efficient manner. I hope you do submit your request, this is the only way our management will know which features our clients need and expect. Nothing I say will influence them as much as customers who expect this feature and submit their comments.
I will post my workaround here, if found any 🙂
Thank you for your support.
Great I think other users would appreciate other workaround information. Here's another similar ticket where the "hard" way was implemented with some automation.
