My client site is using Avada theme and unfortunately the theme developers decided along the way to change their handling of theme options. They had several custom fields for heading and subheading elements, for example, and now all the page / post options are stored in a single field as a serialized array. Now, on some pages I have used the theme meta for my purposes and they are stored in the db. Is there any way to use toolset to edit the meta options values?
Hello, you're talking about using your own custom code to read the old meta options, correct? And you want to manipulate those old values somehow using Toolset? I'm not sure how Avada managed their meta options in the past so I'm not 100% sure about this, but if they were standard custom fields you may be able to take control of those fields in Toolset > Post Fields. That could break your custom code though, I'm not sure how it's set up.
You may also be able to manage the old meta options without Types by turning on the standard Custom Field section for this post type in Toolset > Post Types. That will turn on a custom field editor interface in the post editor screen where you can see all the standard non-hidden custom fields related to the current post. That would allow you to edit the values without managing the fields in Types, and be less likely to break any custom code you have in place.
To manage with Types, there is a link at the bottom of Types > Custom Fields called Post Field Control, where you will have access to a list of all the custom fields. Some third party fields will be listed here, and if the fields you want to manage are listed, you have the option to take control of those fields with Types. Be sure to make a backup of your site before you do this, because you may need to revert if the fields aren't working as expected. Depending on the type of field, it may or may not be possible to edit easily with Types. Date fields, for example, may not use the same date format as a Types date field. Repeating fields or other complex data types like checkboxes groups may not work well, so it really depends on the field itself and the data format used by Avada. Simple text and numeric values should work okay. Multiple option fields like radio and select fields may or may not work well, depending on how they are configured. You may need to adjust the available options in the Post Field editor screen once you take control of the fields.
Okay. Once I decided to manage these fields with types, how can I add them to an editor? Should I just add these fields to a Types custom fields group by adding a field with the corresponding meta key?
How do you display the value of a third-party custom field on the front-end of the site? You can use the wpv-post-field shortcode in a text editor, if that's what you mean. You will replace custom-field-slug with the slug of the custom field in this shortcode template:
[wpv-post-field name="custom-field-slug"]
Documentation for this shortcode: https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/views/views-shortcodes/#wpv-post-field
Let me know if I have misunderstood what you want to achieve.
My issue is resolved now. Thank you!
