Hello. Even though I’ve not personally used toolset much, I am one of the local ambassadors in the San Francisco Bay Area!
I would love some help! I am eager to better understand the information architecture of the data. I believe that a visual map of how the toolset data interconnects would help me a lot. I am preparing to build a searchable bibliography for the web site you have in my contact information. This one CohousingResearchNetwork.Org
If you have other articles or resources which you think might help a mostly non technical person, please send those along too.
I have also decided to hire a local to me California contractor which I am very excite about.
Finally, I’d love to connect with other toolset users and contractors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Who can you connect/point me to?
I look forward to hearing from you
Cordially
Neil
PS please include my email with your reply
PPS Love your new Gutenberg blocks and video tutorials. Thank you
Hi neil@swansway.com, and welcome! I'm not aware of any single visualization overview for Toolset's data flow. Toolset can be used to create your own custom data structures and relationships, so the architecture of what you create with Toolset is dynamic. In general, Toolset's custom post types, fields, and taxonomies are created based on WordPress standards and paradigms. So starting with a basic understanding of WordPress concepts like posts, custom fields, taxonomies, Users, and so on, will help bring new users up to speed.
Beyond that, other features exist in Toolset, and many have descriptive graphics in their documentation here on the site. For example, post relationships are explained with some visuals here: https://toolset.com/documentation/post-relationships/
https://toolset.com/documentation/post-relationships/how-to-set-up-post-relationships-using-toolset/
If you'd like to get more hands-on experience with a working site, feel free to create a free sandbox site at https://discover-wp.com using any of our reference sites. You'll receive an admin login so you can see how things fit together in the wp-admin side of things.
In terms of other Users, I'm aware of a Facebook Users Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/toolset/
Not sure if there is anything location-specific though. WordPress meetups would be local, but more focused on general WordPress than Toolset.
Thanks a lot, Christian. I've a lot of reading and tutorials watching to do. I am not Facebook person. I wish there was another type of forum community. Thanks you for the links to articles with visuals! I'll look though those. The idea of using a sandbox is great and will help. What a great service.
I've a couple of follow up questions.
1) What guidance do you have in regards to prepare a schema for my data - prior to starting to build it out? Feels like I need to get (there I go again) architecture ready ahead of time.
2) Is there a way to use Toolset Search to search all the content rather than specific attributes. So, if I was looking for all types have the word Oakland in them. I've not seen how to build that. Can you point me to the tutorial or other resources where I could learn how to do that?
I appreciate your time
Neil
1) What guidance do you have in regards to prepare a schema for my data - prior to starting to build it out?
Again, understanding how WordPress handles data is the most important thing since Toolset works on the WordPress platform. With that in mind, I usually start by determining what custom post types should be created. That should be the most obvious, once you understand how custom post types work in WordPress. Each CPT has its own menu item in wp-admin. Each post in a CPT has its own URL on the site in the default format https://yoursite.com/post-type-slug/post-slug. Each also has its own archives at /post-type-slug, by default. Each allows you to create multiple posts in that custom post type.
Similarly, determine your custom taxonomies. Taxonomies can be used to group items in the same or different custom post types, and can be used as filters in a custom search View. They can be hierarchical or flat, like WordPress Categories and Tags. Each taxonomy can have its own archive slug as well, unlike custom fields which do not have archives by default.
Custom fields can be applied to one or more post types. These can act like filters in a custom search View. Study the different types of fields listed here to understand how each is used most effectively: https://toolset.com/documentation/customizing-sites-using-php/functions/
Post relationships can be used to establish connections between different post types that cannot otherwise be established with taxonomies and custom fields. Set those up and begin connecting posts.
Taxonomies, custom fields, and post relationships aren't necessarily in a fixed order. The main thing is to determine custom post types first, because that lays the foundation for the other items.
2) Is there a way to use Toolset Search to search all the content rather than specific attributes.
A custom search View can search through multiple post types. Just select the different post types you want to query in the View's Content Selection editor. In order to index custom fields for a text search, you must also use Relevanssi: https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/searching-texts-custom-fields-views-relevanssi/
A basic WordPress search can be configured to do the same type of multiple post type query. You can design the results of a basic WordPress search using our WordPress Archives feature. Again, Relevanssi is required to search custom field contents.
