[Resolved] Front End only

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[Geoffrey Cleverley]

Hi

I am creating an archive and review site. My test site is for 'books' but the end site will be for cultural content somewhat analogous, so 'books' will do.

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Author & Publisher posts are parents of Book posts, Book reviews are Children of Book posts.

I have used CRED to create user registration forms with custom fields, and submissions forms for reviews, new 'books, 'authors', 'publishers' etc

Subscribers will be able to create their profile and submit new content to the site via these forms.

There will be levels of users, I am happy for regular users to become contributors and editors for the site and gain a higher level of access to the backend, but I would prefer to keep subscribers on the front end only.

With regards to your classified site and tutorial, and the membership site case study:
https://toolset.com/reference-site/toolset-classifieds/
https://toolset.com/2015/03/building-a-membership-site-with-wordpress-a-challenge-or-a-piece-of-cake-a-case-study/

These both seem to keep users in a front end environment, but that is because Toolset is integrated with Woocommerce.

Does anyone have any suggestions about alternative, non commerce based plugins, that would allow me to keep basic users in a front end environment?

Or perhaps I could use woocommerce, and just not add any products, and use toolset to manipulate the custom user fields and posts?

Any suggestions are welcome!

Jeff

[Beda]

WooCommerce is only used if you want to cover payment (charge) the user on certain Form Submissions.

If you don't need to charge payment WooCommerce and CRED Commerce is not needed.

CRED let's you build all necessary forms and Access lets you control their display.
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/learn-what-you-can-do-with-cred/
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/access-control-for-cred-forms/

If you need to cover payment, WooCommerce is the ONLY plugin that is integrated with Toolset for this purpose.

Let me know if you need more info

[Geoffrey Cleverley]

Hi Beda,

I understand about woocommerce not being needed. I was merely referring to it as an example of the desired user experience re: no back end acccess. As in, with my woocommerce sites, when a user signs in they never see the wordpress dashboard. This is the sort of functionality I am looking for and was meaning to talk about.

I apologise for obfuscating my issue, please let me be clearer.

I wish to keep basic subscribers from the dashboard altogether.

My site is a 'book' review site, I had planned on creating user profile posts and book posts as parents of book review posts.

You have a similar example in your documentation:
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/cred-forms-for-child-content/

However in another support post that is dealing more primarily with the structure of the posts and the cred forms:

https://toolset.com/forums/topic/membership-based-review-site-user-profiles-products-and-reviews/

A support worker gave me some advice to forgo the users creating a profile post, that this was not necessary as I could use CRED forms to register new users and allow them to edit their profiles.

I have followed the advice from that support request and asked for some more advice, he however advised me to create separate support requests for specific problems I come across while implementing this review structure...

and so here we are 🙂

-------------

So I have my CRED forms that allow me to register users, and for them to edit their profile. That is great.

However when these users sign up they go to a limited version of the dashboard to view their profile. I do not want that, I want them to never see the back-end.

I'd like to restrict the dashboard to higher level users, admins, editors etc and keep subscribers user experience in the front end, with them being able to view and edit their profiles from there.

If I use something like:
https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/remove-dashboard-access-for-non-admins

Then when a user signs up they would be redirected to some sort of profile page.

I need some advice about creating a front end user profile page experience.

___________

Option 1.

In my other thread, it was suggested to use an Author Archive page as profile, which would include a view of their details and a loop including a list and links to their reviews.

This will allow anyone to view that users details, with the content loop below containing their reviews.

But what about the signed in user?

Obviously they can click their username link to take them to their own archive.

But is it possible to create a link that takes you to the currently signed in users archive, that can appear in say a menu?

Can an archive page include a link to a edit the signed in user CRED form? They need to be able to edit their profile from this page.
___________

Option 2.

How about creating a 'profile page', with corresponding link in the menu.

On that page having a view which will display the current users profile.

Is it possible to create a view that lists all the users content of a certain type, ie reviews?

___________

Option 3.

Some combination of the above two options.

____________

Thanks in advance for any help and advice you can furnish me with.

Best

Jeff

p.s.

Once I have got my head around Toolset more, I fully intend to integrate it with my woocommerce sites. Really awesome potential.

[Beda]

1. No back end acccess. As in, with my woocommerce sites, when a user signs in they never see the wordpress dashboard. This is the sort of functionality I am looking for and was meaning to talk about.

Yes, you are correct here, Users will ALWAYS have a minimal backend Access, and WooCommerce actually redirects customers to the front end if they try to access wp-admin

This can also be achieved with Custom Code, or with 3rd Party Plugins, on a role level.

2. https://toolset.com/forums/topic/membership-based-review-site-user-profiles-products-and-reviews/

I've read that thread, and already discussed it with Nigel.

The thing is, he is basically right.
BUT in some cases, a Custom Post Type "User" as a equivalent to your WordPress users can be useful or is needed
This as example when:
-You need your users to author the SAME post the same time (many users can be author of one post)
This is not possible with native WordPress authorship and only with a Types relationship, so here you would use a CPT "User" or "Profile"
- You can not query a user view (parametric search) at the moment
- You can not load posts by author (parametric search) in a Post view
- etc (jut to name a few)

I see you have many doubts about how to set things up.

We must try to keep each thread on a single topic / issue.

This is to grant best support for you and also fast solution finding by other users of this forum.

The Topic of this Thread relates to let certain Users see only the Front End and this is not possible with Toolset only.
As you correctly recognized, we do it with WooCommerce Add On Roles, or you can use Custom Code or 3rd Party Plugins to avoid wp-admin access at all.

A simple removal of the Admin Bar and a redirect if a certain User Role tries to access wp-admin is usually enough.

We can not provide this Code, but browsing the WordPress Support Forums and Plugin repositories you will find your needed details.

Regarding the issue about User Profile (whether to use CRED and native User Profiles or a CPT), this is up to you to decide, as mentioned, have a pendant CPT can bring in some more freedom in how your data is connected.

Simple is, to use only the WordPress Profile and a CRED Form to edit / Create them.

You can use HTML conditional to show or hide certain Links, or Forms, to logged or non-logged in users:
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/conditional-html-output-in-views/

You can also create Views that List Posts of any type by any user:
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/views/
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/filtering-views-query-by-author/

[Geoffrey Cleverley]

1. Front end only user experience.

Thanks for confirming that, I think I have found some third party solutions. Just need to test them out.

2. User profiles

You're right, I am a little torn about which direction to go. I think I need to both discuss this with my partner and see what case uses we forsee, and also maybe test both methods out on the test site.

I haven't marked this as resolved yet, I will return and ONLY repost with results of my experimentation with the different third party solutions to 1. Front end only user experience.

Thanks for your help and guidance.

Jeff

[Beda]

Yes, sure.

Please let me know if you need some information or consultation.

This thread stays open 30 Days from now - then a "friendly reminder robot" will remind you of it, before closing the thread.

Thank you

[Geoffrey Cleverley]

I have found solutions that limit users access to the dashboard through a combination of:

Custom login page and redirect links.
Function to hide admin bar.

I decided to create a my-profile page to display the current users profile details and their reviews via views.

I am looking at using the author archives for users to see other users reviews and profile details.