There are two WordPress user types. Those who know PHP and those who don’t. Whether you know PHP or not, you can be a professional web developer by understanding WordPress custom fields concept. A WordPress custom field allows you to store additional data about a certain content type (e.g. blog post) and display it according to the purpose of custom field creation. Toolset is a WordPress plugin that you can use to create custom fields. Actually, it is a versatile plugin. Not only you can use Toolset to create custom fields, but you can also use it to create a custom post type and front-end submission form. Toolset also offers a set of Gutenberg blocks which you can use to add more content elements to your page, other than the ones offered by Gutenberg. For instance, there is a Countdown block which you can use to display animated countdown and an Image Slider block to create image sliders.
If you use a page builder plugin like Elementor or Brizy on your WordPress site, you can display the dynamic content you created with Toolset as these page builders support integration with Toolset. For instance, you can display the custom fields you created with Toolset on a custom single post template. Or, you can create a custom template and assign it to a custom post type you created with Toolset.
Toolset Features
Toolset consists of five components: Blocks, Types, Forms, Access, and Maps.
Blocks
This Toolset component adds a set of Gutenberg blocks which allows you to add more content elements to a page or blog post, be it static element or dynamic element. After installing and activating the Toolset plugin, you will see the following blocks on Gutenberg:
| Rating | Image Slider | Audio |
| Fields and Text | Video | Progress Indicator |
| Content Template | Reviews | Cart Message |
| Grid | Related Products | Product Price |
| Repeating Field | Product Meta | Product Image |
| Social Share | List Attributes | Single field |
| YouTube | Add to Cart Button | Form |
| Gallery | Product Tabs | View |
| Star Rating | Breadcrumbs | Map |
| Conditional | Button | Countdown |
The Blocks component of Toolset allows you to display the data of the custom fields you can created with Toolset, via the blocks on the table above. You can also create custom templates, create archives for custom content, and more.
Types
This is the component you need to create custom fields and custom post types. Also, the Types component allows you to create custom taxonomies. You can then display the data of the custom fields using the Blocks component above. Or, once again, you can also display them using Elementor or Brizy.
Forms
This component is great if you want to create a user-generated content website with WordPress. It allows you to create a form to edit the content on your site’s front-end. It will automatically include fields that belong to the content, including custom fields.
Access
This component allows you to control what users can do on your website. You can control them based on the user role. You can, for instance, prevent users with a certain role to access a certain content type. Yes, you can use the Access component to add a functionality like a membership plugin offers. You can also pair the Access component with the Forms component to create a front-end management so that users don’t need to login to the WordPress dashboard to, say, submit new content.
Maps
This component allows you to display maps to content. The Maps component of Toolset supports Google Maps and Azure Maps. This component is useful if you want to create a website type that requires location to display.