Steven ZahmOk, I spent this gorgeous Sunday afternoon creating a custom metabox and field API for Connections. The framework is very solid; even though it doesn’t actually save/retrieve the custom data just yet.
I am looking for input; so if you could install the alpha release of Connections and the Connections Metabox and Field Demo plugins and provide some, that would be terrific! You could install this on a production site as the only real change to the Connections core is including the PHP file that contains the new API and initialize it. It also couple CSS tweaks for the fields related to the custom fields. The demo plugin nothing but register new meta boxes and fields.
The second plugin is just a demo plugin that adds 4 custom meta boxes with over a dozen different custom fields to the bottom the the add/edit entry admin pages using the new API.
Link to the Connections version 0.8-alpha.1 plugin.
Link to the Connections Custom Fields and Metaboxes Demo plugin.
What’s left to do?
- Add another, almost, dozen field type to the API.
- Write an API for saving/retrieving the custom data.
- Document the demo plugin and upload it to GitHub.
- Figure out how this interfaces with the template API.
What’s the future hold for this?
- There will be a separate Extension Connections to add/managing custom metabox and fields. Will this be free or paid? Undecided. I would actually prefer free, but this will increase support.
- The API is designed from the ground up to be extensible on its own. What this means; I’ll be able to create extension custom fields for things like galleries; sliders maps and more. Cool, yes?