Custom Fields Use Cases
From MovableType
On this page we hope to collect data on how our community hopes to use the functionality found within the Custom Fields feature found within the Professional Pack.
We invite you to share with us your ideas for how you plan on and intend to, or would like to use Custom Fields.
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Instructions
We ask that you provide us with the following information, but all information you share is optional:
- Your Name
- Your Blog URL
- Whether you primarily use MT for personal or commercial use
- The description of your use case
Use Cases
Use Case #1
I've set up blogs for clients who don't want to think about uploading images, image placement, etc. They just simply want to choose one "masthead image" for their article that gets put in the same place each time. Same thing with podcasting. So what I've done in many, many instances is created a custom field that allowed them to choose an image and let the templates do the placement. (See SimplyRecipes.com) Obviously, if they had extra images, they could go through the upload process. But most people just want the ability to choose one key image and associate it with an article.
A side note here: RightFields used to make the whole process painless because you could set the upload path and users would only have to pick the picture from their computer. They didn't have to go through the hassle of the asset manager (a fairly complex process where you have to choose several confusing options). The ideal for me would be to allow them a simple, image upload that then placed it into the asset manager without them needing to go through a complicated process.
+1 from Komra Moriko design4results.com
My use case is exactly as above, especially for image handling. I find the assets manager unusable for inexperienced -- or very busy -- clients. I need something dead simple for them to use. And having a separate field for image upload is perfect for this. I also use custom fields for distinct data that should be associated with a post most often when adapting MT as a CMS. See http://www.lyricstage.com for an example of this.
+1 from Marleen Zachte
This method also comes in handy for clients who wish to use captions with their images, allowing for special formatting through css. It also gives them the ability to differentiate between images for indexes and individual entries.
As already stated, Custom Fields lacks the click-and-browse ease and the configurable destination path of RightFields, here. Similar functionality can be achieved with Brad Choate's KeyValues plugin, but in a much less user friendly way.
Use Case #2
LaRosa Johnson
http://trailblazinministries.com
Personal user
Custom fields isn't something I currently use on my website, but I have used it before, especially when it first came out. Here is a scenario of how I used it on one of my previous websites (and may implement again in a future website, as I deal a lot with music).
I had a website that was focused on doing music reviews and I used custom fields for many different aspects of the review. I used all of the default MT fields for basic information (such as the body of the review), but I used custom fields for quite a bit such as having fields for the following: album score/rating, guest artists, producers, track list, cover art, record label, URL to artist/label site, URL to purchase the album, and so on. Sure, I could have just as easily put these in the entry body, but it was a lot easier to have them in custom fields, allowing me to adjust how & where they were displayed, and it helped to keep me from forgetting a field (by making them all mandatory fields), whereas it would have been easy to forget if they were merely in the entry body.
Plus, on a personal blog, it would be nice to use custom fields for things like: currently reading/watching/listening to, mood, etc. a la MySpace and other platforms that support blogging. But the above is the major case in which I used custom fields on a personal site, and I wouldn't have been able to do it without it.
Use Case #3
Rob Buckley
I use it for my martial arts club site. Each entry has a "belt" custom field which allows me to specify - in the case of a technique - which belt it's appropriate for and if it's about an instructor or student, which grade they are.
I also use it for entries where I can specify a "mugshot" (image) of the instructor or student. If there's a mugshot specified, a different layout for the entry is used, with the mugshot in a floating sidebar.
Lastly, I use it for category archives. Each category (and entry in each category) has a listing of all the entries in that category. I have a custom field for each category so that you can specify what kind of option each entry represents (eg "Pick a technique", "Pick a student", "Pick an option") without having a separate template for each category (I have about 20 categories in all).
Use Case #4
Rob Buckley
I also use custom fields for my media blog. I have three entry fields: one is for a review's rating, one is a custom image that displays a graph of the quality of a TV series per episode (it's an uploaded image), and one is a corresponding Amazon item uploaded using the plug-in Media Manager. The entry's layout changes according to whether one, two or three items are present.
I could do the layout manually, but it would be a real pain.
Use Case #5
Doug Schaefer
I'm using RightFields on mt MT 3.33 blog, but here's what I'm doing with it. I understand that some of these things aren't possible with CF. I also used CF on another blog in the same installation.
- Image uploads and formatting. I can upload up to 3 images on the image entry screen and an included template formats them and places them into the post. It sounds like CF won't do the image upload and that the asset manager is a little cumbersome. Too bad.
- On a now-defunct family blog, I used CF to manage author archives, now in the MT4 core.
- I also used CF on that blog to create author fields. All the members were descendants of one of 4 sisters, so I created fields that indicated the sister they were descended from, where they lived, link to an author photo, etc.--Salguod 17:56, 18 December 2007 (PST)
Use Case #6
Phil Gyford
Pepys' Diary
A personal site but I also do some MT-based work professionally on clients' installations.
The Encyclopedia section of Pepys' Diary uses Custom Fields to add extra information to each encyclopedia entry:
- Latitude, Longitude and Zoom so that entries which are about locations can have a Google Map automatically generated.
- Wikipedia title, so that encyclopedia entries which have a corresponding Wikipedia page can automatically pull in the Wikipedia content.
I used to use RightFields but changed to the Custom Fields beta when I upgraded to MT 4. Two things I miss from RF:
- The ability to specify a numeric data type, instead of plain text (I imagine this would make it easier if I wanted to do any custom SQL on data that is numeric).
- The ability to customise the size of the input fields on the MT entry edit page. A small point, but it looks a bit dumb having a very wide input field for a piece of data that will only be two characters long.
Use Case #7
Robert Denton
Fishouse Poems
An audio archive of emerging poets.
This is a non-profit site.
We take submissions or curate submissions from emerging poets. After it's decided they fit into the site the poet is sent a recorder into which they read their audio, send it back, and we post it for them. Each author has a home page with a list of poems. We aggregate poets into a big list and now that we've grown this list should be sortable by first or last name.
Category archives were originally relied upon to make our site structure work so each poet is a category.
I have tested CustomFields in v3.33, specifically Custom Category Fields Version 1.2 to create a first/last name fields for category attributes which I can then use to sort by. It's great and this feature could keep me in MT since I don't have much time to develop a or maintain a more detailed custom solution.