[Support request] [GP2.0 Alpha] Miscellaneous Feedback

[Olivier]

Kudos to the team, these dynamic options really elevate GP to the next level! Just in time for my main site rebuild in the next few months!!!

After 4-5 hours of experimenting with it, I have not found any bugs. Some questions/feedback (let me know if you prefer different threads for these).

Apply to
I’m struggling with the ‘Apply to’ feature of the content template. I originally thought from your small launch description that based on term or tag, we would be able to use a different content template to style each post ‘family’ within the archive (ie: posts with a tag of ‘news’ could have a red background in the archive page). Did I misunderstand this feature? I know you just released it yesterday so it’s a lot to ask for some documentation or a use case but whenever you can, that would be very much appreciated!

Dynamic Text Block
I find it a little counter intuitive and counter productive to have this special block just to access excerpt and 3 others without any of the awesome formatting of the Heading block… Can we just have access to Excerpt, Author bio, etc… within the Headline block (set to paragraph). I understand the tricky one would be ‘Post Content’ and I’m sure there is a valid reason for splitting these from the Heading block but I’m so spoiled using the format options of Heading.

Dynamic text links

When you choose to create a Dynamic Link, please add option for that link to also include the ‘before text’, not just the Dynamic Field name itself.
Use case: in author byline, I’d like to have a <a href=#”>Read more by author Name</a> link but right now, it would only show as: Read more by <a href="#">author name</a>

Duplicate Element
Now that we are building so many functionality within the elements pane, it would be nice if there was a built in duplicate Element command – I now use Yoast Duplicate Post but it’s one less plugin.

Sticky posts
Any way to access that so that we can customise the look of a sticky post (example: a different coloured outline to highlight it). I know you can use CSS but I mean in the Content Template block layout?

Show notes in Element column grid
It would be very useful as you build the site to be able to quickly identity the element’s function by seeing an excerpt of the notes within the Elements pane

Cheers. Olivier

[Tom]

Hi Olivier,

Thanks for the feedback! Really appreciate it.

Apply to
That’s correct. This allows you to apply the Content Template only to specific posts with a term or a custom field. For example, you can design different templates for different post formats (aside, etc..).

Dynamic Text Block
This is a tough one due to how the dynamic functionality works. It replaces the inside of the HTML elements (the headline, for example). It would break things if a <p> element had a bunch of other <p> elements inside of it. It would also be very difficult to give a preview of your dynamic text using the Headline block. The more preview text you add in there, the more work has to be done on the front-end to replace it with the dynamic value.

Dynamic text links
Ahh, tricky one. I’ll see if this is possible within the current system.

Duplicate element
There are some internal issues that arise from duplicating Elements (or pages) using GenerateBlocks. This makes it so the unique IDs for the blocks are no longer unique, which can cause CSS to apply to multiple blocks. I’d like to sort that issue out before adding this kind of functionality by default.

Sticky posts
Ah, good idea. This would be a good option in the Apply to section.

Notes
Sort of like the Internal Notes in the other Elements?

Thanks again for the feedback! 🙂

[Olivier]

Apply to
OK, I got it working now, this is extremely cool but a little tricky to get set up…

A few things:
1. It would be very nice if the Term name field supported multiple items so that you can apply a content template to, for example, Posts with term > Post_tag > tag1, tag2

2. This powerful functionality screams for some sort of priority order to know which content template should be used when there are conflicts. 

Use Case1 : I apply one content template to tag1 and another to category1. If a post is both in category1 AND has the tag1, which layout “wins”? (right now, it seems to bail and reverts to the default GP layout)


Use Case 2: I create a Content Template for Posts with Category1 and another one for Post with Category2. It would be nice if I could still have a ‘base’ content template that handles all other categories without having to define them for all (especially since we can’t really duplicate the elements easily).

Show notes in Element column grid

What I meant is displaying the notes in the Elements list in the admin. For example, if I use a Content Template for a particular tag, I’d add in the notes: “for all posts with [tagName]”. A few weeks later, I come back to the site and now, I need to click on the element, scroll down and then click on “internal note” tab to see what this Element does. Displaying that note in the list columns would be very useful.

Saw that Alpha.2 what posted. Will download and keep playing with it… Again kuddos to the team, it’s really a stable Alpha! Is there anything in particular you would like us to bang on?

Cheers,
Olivier

[Author]

Posts