[Support request] Question about sections implementation

[dmendana]

Hello,

I want to have sections in my site, but I need to know how the sections plugin works before using it.

I’m very strict regarding plugins and themes. The basic rule is never putting content at risk. That means, for example, never using theme shortcodes, since they will break your content when you change the theme. But I’m also extremely wary of plugin shortcodes, since plugins get discontinued. So I reject almost any plugin that might break my content if I uninstall it.

Breaking the content means display a shortcode as plain text, or content disappearance. Up until now I’ve done sections with a personal plugin and custom formats, which is totally safe since it only adds HTML to the content.

How so sections work internally? What is added to the plain text of the page: shortcodes, HTML? What will happen if I disable the plugin, will all the text of the sections remain in the pages, or disappear? Is the sections plugin as safe as my approach?

Thank you very much for this wonderful theme and plugins!

[Roberto Enrique]

The section add-on permits you to “Export” the content of your sections to the normal editor with the touch of a button:

View post on imgur.com

It does what it says but I can understand that if you have hundreds of pages and you chose to change theme you’ll have a lot of manual work to do. So, if you want, yes, is a sort of lock-in but, IMHO, it is not an intentional one.

I actually think that may be this Add-on could be treated as a separate plugin but, don’t know if it is actually possible.

[dmendana]

That’s great, although should it be done page by page? It’d be great to be able to bulk export the sections to the editor for all the pages. At least it’s not a complete lock-in. Thanks!

[Tom]

Hi there,

I’m super cautious of theme lock – that’s why GP doesn’t have any shortcodes baked in.

Sections is currently being re-built, and I’m working on a way that takes the content from your sections (stored in postmeta) and adds it to your default editor whenever you save.

This way, if you were to disable Sections, all of your content would still be present in your default editor.

The button was a nice start, but you’re right, it doesn’t really scale that well when you have hundreds of pages.

I’m on it 🙂

[Tom]

I can confirm that in the next version of GP Premium (1.2.90), publishing/updating your sections will automatically save your section content into the default editor.

This means if you ever disable Sections, your content will still be there 🙂

[dmendana]

I can only say: WOW.

Also, just to be sure: would that have a performance impact perhaps?

But again: oh wow.

[Tom]

Not at all, it will just save your content into the default editor as it would if you were to input it there manually 🙂

[Author]

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