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Pods & Themer

Now that you know how post types work, what pods are, and how to use Pods to create a Custom Post Type and Taxonomy, its time to decide how these posts are going to visually appear. This section will show you how to use Beaver Themer to create a template for your pods and the importance of using "Field Connections" and "Magic Tags" when building both your themer template and your post archive page.

Field Connections & Shortcodes

Field Connections in Themer

Beaver Themer field connections work like variables. They let you connect certain row and module settings to external data on your site, such as:

  • Site information (site title, site tagline)
  • Post information (post title, post content, featured image, categories, tags, etc.)
  • WordPress custom fields or Pods Custom Fields

Field connection shortcodes

When you open a row or module for editing, you'll notice a plus sign next to some of the setting fields. These plus signs indicate that you can set field connections to eligible data from another area of your site. When you mouse over a field connection, you'll see a choice of Connect or Insert.

  • Connect

    To add the field connection as the only value in the row or module setting, click Connect.

  • Insert

    If you want to add additional text or more than one field connection to the row or module setting, click Insert to insert the shortcode.

Field connection shortcodes are essential in the following cases:
  • You want the module setting to display more than just a single field connection. For example, you want to add some text or use more than one field connection.
  • You want to add custom field connections to your layout. For example, you want to use a custom layout in a Posts module to include custom field values.

Note: Field connection shortcodes always substitute a text string, so they can only be used for module settings where you'd normally enter text.

Finding Shortcodes & Parameters

There are two ways to find field connection shortcodes and parameters: One is to look through the field connection shortcode index from the manually-maintained Beaver Builder knowledge base. Another "dynamic" way is to access the shortcodes and their parameters through an HTML module. This way you can see a full list of field connections regardless of data type.

Custom Fields & Magic Tags

Custom fields that you've created with Pods work just like custom fields added using the core WordPress form. Just add the field name (key) using the Post Custom Field connection. How to do this will be shown in the singular themer layout section below.

Magic Tags are like the special variables used in Mail Merge Templates; you can use them to identify custom fields or post fields to be replaced in your Pods Templates. These magic tags take the form of {@field_name}. Pods automatically retrieves the value of the field name specified in the magic tag.

See the Pen Pods Custom Fields by Laila (@lucidscreams) on CodePen.

Using Conditional shortcodes

Besides field connection shortcodes, which return the contents of field connections as text strings, Beaver Themer has conditional field connection shortcodes, which display custom text if the field connection shortcode meets the conditional if statement.

You can test for:

  • Boolean if and if-else syntax

    Tests whether the shortcode returns content or is empty

  • Field Values

    Test for text or integer value for WordPress custom fields

Example: Approved Plugins

The Approved Plugins seen on this site were added using Pods. We're going to use the approved plugin pods as an example to demonstrate how to create a singular layout and archive layout for them in the sections below. We'll be focusing on the Custom Post Type "Approved Plugins," and the Custom Taxonomy "Plugin Types." For the Singular Post Layout walk-through, we will be looking at the "USPS Shipping" post and for the archive layout walk-through we'll be looking at the "Woo Extensions" category. 

Post Type - Singular Layout

Before you Start

Make sure you have your custom post type built in Pods, your custom taxonomy built, and at least one of your custom posts added before you start building the themer layout so you have a post to view when connecting fields. 

  • 1 Add a new singular themer layout
  • 2 Name it something like "[Custom post type name] Singular Layout"
  • 3 In the Location drop down choose your custom post type (approved plugins in this example) > apply it to all "Approved Plugins"
  • 4 Publish the layout, then launch Beaver Builder
  • 5 Remove the default themer post template - its easier to start with a blank slate
  • 6 Add a hero row or columns to the page to make it consistent with the layout on the rest of the site

Look at the fields that your post type pod has - it helps to have the "edit post" view on your second monitor screen for easy reference. For this example, the post type's edit screen will be in the column to the left, and screenshots of the themer layout with connections to each field will be shown with captions on the right. The fields are color-coded to match the field connection screenshots to make it easier to follow.

Click to see "USPS Shipping" or any other approved plugin to see the singular themer layout's end result.

screencapture-add-new-plugin

Post Title - default post component 

Post Content - default post editor

Featured Image - default post component

Setup Requirements text - plain text field

Setup Requirements link - plain text field

Setup scope - plain text paragraph field

Link to features site - plain text field

Link to plugin site - plain text field

Link to plugin documentation - plain text field

When to use summary - plain text field

When to use full details - WYSIWYG field

Initial setup instructions - WYSIWYG field

Plugin configuration instructions - WYSIWYG field

Plugin Types - category checkboxes

Notice how the fields for the features, plugin and documentation links are added in pods as "Plain Text" field types rather than "Website URL" field types. This is because the "link" field inside a button module places its contents into an "a" tag. Using the "Website URL" field in pods also places anything entered into the field within an "a" tag. So, if you used the "Website URL" field type to hold these links, and then used the field connection to place the contents of the field into the link area of the button, the button module would end up placing an "a" tag within an "a" tag which can break it. Using a plain text field means you can put the field's connection shortcode or magic tag shortcode into the "href" of an "a" tag without any conflicts.

Insert terms list shortcode to show terms from the "plugin types" taxonomy
put the setup requirements link field magic tag shortcode in the "href" of an "a" tag, then put the setup requirements text field shortcode within the "a" tag

Taxonomy - Archive Layout

Before you Start

Make sure you have your custom post type built in Pods, your custom taxonomy built, and at least 3 of your custom posts added before you start building the themer layout so you see how the posts in the archive will look. 

  • 1 Add a new archive themer layout
  • 2 Name it something like "[Custom taxonomy name] Category Layout"
  • 3 In the Location drop down choose your custom taxonomy archive (approved plugin type archive in this example) > apply it to all "Plugin Types"
  • 4 Publish the layout, then launch Beaver Builder
  • 5 Remove the default themer post template - its easier to start with a blank slate
  • 6 Add a hero row or columns to the page to make it consistent with the layout on the rest of the site
  • Pull a posts module into the archive template - make sure you use a posts module that gives you the option for a "custom layout"
  • In the case of the "Woo Extensions" archive example, the PowerPack module "Post Content Grid" was used - you can also use the standard posts module since it now allows a custom layout option
  • Set the content of the module to "main query"
  • Set the layout to "custom" and click to "edit custom layout" - In the HTML tab you will see a regular HTML layout filled with shortcodes that you may recognize from the previous section
  • The CSS for the posts custom layout can be modified from the CSS tab in the same area once you're done with your html layout

What fields do you want to include?

Before you touch your post module's HTML layout, think about the fields from the post that you want to be shown for each post on the archive page. In the case of the "Woo Extensions" plugin type archive, the following fields were selected to show for each post:

  • Featured image
  • Post title
  • Custom field - "When to Use"
  • Post link
  • Custom field - Features Link
  • Custom field - Documentation

See the image below on how the shortcodes were added into the HTML layout and how they correspond to the post module. The HTML layout has been styled with css to get the layout to look the way it does, but the important part was making sure the module was able to pull the fields from each post in the archive. Click to see "Woo Extensions" plugin type archive's end result.

Table of Contents
    Add a header to begin generating the table of contents
    Next Steps

    Use the workflow to help you create your own pod OR import a pre-built layout.

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