Custom Fields for Posts opened 09:21PM - 16 Sep 17 UTC (UTC) closed 08:53AM - 20 Sep 17 UTC (UTC) [philippefutureboy] philippefutureboy feature later Within the top 15 requested features on the [Ghost Feature Wishlist](http://idea…s.ghost.org/forums/285309-wishlist/filters/top), this feature has been waiting for some love since 2015. I volunteer to help out with this feature's development. # Brief Overview Ghost is one of the most customizable publishing platform for the general public out there, and sports most of the major benefits of all its competitors. However, every now and then comes a blogger with a vision for a design, and that vision requires complete customization of the fields on the core model objects. Think, _featured image subtitle_, featured link as replacement for image_ (video content, tweet, facebook embed, soundcloud), and even more. With the advent of apps, this feature will most likely gain further support as the custom fields will be readily accessible just like any other fields on the core model objects. It is most likely that apps will seek to alter the content and/or the structure of the database, and to allow such behaviour will result in a maintenance mess. Hence it is important to allow such customization now with proper separation of concerns so that later features can use its power at the fullest. # Feature Details ## Custom Fields Themselves - Custom Fields should be implemented as fields that are available across all objects of a model, with each instance/row having its own value for the said property. - Each core model affected should have its own set of custom fields defined by the user, without commonality with each other. - Custom Fields should be easily accessible from the block helpers used in the hbs templates - Custom Fields should be easily usable by non-technical personnel so that the widest audience possible be able to use them. ## Core Models Affected ### Iteration 1 - Post ### Iteration 2 - User (gender, sexual orientation, age, behance/deviantart/instagram/some social media, etc can be seen as potential use cases) ### Other Models I do not foresee the need for any extra custom fields on other models at the moment. If anybody has a very good use case, I'll update this section accordingly. ## Proposed UI Workflow I am no designer, but here is what I came up with. 1. Custom Fields are to be accessible from the General Settings (general.hbs) view ![custom fields settings closed](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31741972/30515638-0c74c59a-9afa-11e7-9f8b-6d5f0cc44b56.png) 2. Custom Fields are to be added/removed dynamically and easily. Type of the field (Number, Text, Boolean) can be specified for later retrieval and parsing by the model ![custom fields settings expanded](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31741972/30515652-4629ca6a-9afa-11e7-921d-0487110710e1.png) 3. Each post has access to the Custom Field menu through its Settings menu ![new story custom fields nav](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31741972/30515666-6a9e2274-9afa-11e7-89e8-03d8686d7f35.png) 4. Each post has its own value for the Custom Fields that can be specified in their Custom Field menu ![new story custom fields menu](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31741972/30515673-82f626c8-9afa-11e7-80a4-217b7ac778f7.png) ## Scope of the changes After my preliminary analysis of the codebase yesterday, here is what I gathered: ### Ghost - `core/server/models/custom-field` is to be created as a table representing the custom-fields for each other linked table (see below) - `core/server/models/custom-field-value` is to be created as a table representing the values associated to each core model object which has the said custom fields (see below) - `core/server/models/post` and `core/server/models/user` are to be modified to allow read, mutation, deletion of custom fields. - `core/server/helpers/post_class` and `core/server/helpers/author` are to be potentially modified to include the custom field helper - `core/server/helpers/custom` helper has to be created to allow users to template using the `custom` block helper and output helper - `core/server/api/*` API endpoints have to be modified accordingly to support modification of the custom field and custom field value models. It is undetermined at the moment whether this should be done through the `posts` and `users` endpoints or through the `settings` endpoint. #### Quick DB Class Diagram ![Class Diagram](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31741972/30516085-d499cb76-9b02-11e7-902d-371d85b5f006.png) ### Ghost-Admin #### General Settings Page - `app/controllers/general` Unclear whether modifications should be done on this file. It does play a significant role however in contacting the server to update the settings under the General page (general.hbs) - `app/templates/settings/general.hbs` Modify the layout to include the new custom field settings. Will require the creation of a new `component` for the layout shown in the second mockup. - `app/models/setting` Include a new field to validate on the model. Will require the creation of a new `ember-data Transform` in order to support and validate the custom field. #### Editor Page - `app/mixins/editor-base-controller` May need modification to allow mutation and save of the custom fields - `app/components/gh-posts-settings-menu` Modify to include the design seen in screens 3 and 4. May require the creation of an extra components for dynamically generating the list of custom fields on screen 4. - `app/models/post` Include a new field to validate on the model. Will require the creation of a new `ember-data Transform` in order to support and validate the custom field values. ## Expected Time Investment | Activity | Estimate | Conservative Estimate | |---|---|---| | Supplementary Analysis | 3h | 6h | | Implementation (Ghost) | 10h | 20h | | Testing (Ghost) | 10h | 20h | | Implementation (Ghost Admin) | 10h | 20h | | Testing (Ghost Admin) | 4h | 8h | | TOTAL | 37h | 74h | This is undoubtedly a large epic, and would benefit from being undertaken by multiple individuals / be broken down in smaller user stories. # Drawbacks - Potential bottleneck on the CustomField / CustomFIeldValue table if accesses are done often. With proper caching practice should not be problematic however. - Requires changes to large portion of the Ghost/Ghost-Admin software - Increases maintenance debt by increasing the codebase - Feature may not be necessary for a large portion of the target market but nevertheless eases a significant portion of the user base and facilitates future symbiosis of apps # Alternatives - Custom install on self-hosted version - Front-end with external database - Apps with ability to modify existing database structure (and potentially requiring reboot for each new modification) It is an understatement to say that this list of alternatives is unsatisfying. Friends, the future without custom fields is dire 😱 Let us not allow ourselves to follow such a dark path. For example, to have caption for the featured image (using in the theme with the custom field), and many other possible things. It’s currently a feature tagged “later”, with the author of the above issue offering to work on it.

This is a key issue that effects my next site build. If I am hamstrung by the lack of custom fields I won’t be able to complete my site :frowning:

[image] chrisarmstrong: tom fields to posts yet, or if this is in development? the original question(custom fields) are forgotten…=/ I follow this from github to here, to find nothing In moment i think that create a filed to store a json (as mobiledoc) in one migration and use to store adicional properties. Search can be done indexing api content.

Any update from Ghost team about this topic? It would be very nice to add some basic additional field, for example an url field for linkblog style post. (I tried insert links to the title field, or simple post without title field, but non of them work. The simplicity of Ghost could make it very very suitable for microblogging (link post types, short post without title, etc.) but it is not applicable without customisable fields for posts :cold_sweat::cold_sweat::cold_sweat:

[image] naz: Ghost transforms all local absolute URL’s to relative and stores them in the relative form in the db. The reason for this is when the blog is migrated to a different domain local URL’s keep working. Hey…that’s a neat feature! I was worrying about this when setting up my Gatsby site, but it magically worked :smile:

Repetita but missing a simple and elegant feature where we could create some custom-fields (in yaml for example) and add them via the post page. Example settings/custom-fields.yaml actors: type: {array,string,number,custom} # natives types / customizable via attributes input_props: type: text minlength: 2 maxlength: 54 video_urls: type: array input_props: type: text required: true validation: /^(ftp|http|https):\/\/[^]+$/ hint: Add here some videos URLs Then, custom-fields are availables in the post sidebar and served in a JSON attribute.

The lack of custom fields greatly limits how Ghost can be used. Perhaps it’s intentional to keep things simple for the target audience, but it’s difficult to put Ghost in the same league as other CMS platforms for anything but the most trivial of sites.

It’s really funny when topic started from idea of custom fields for posts and then moved to conversation about posts urls. I want to support topic starter. We need custom fields for posts or some API or tooling for doing this thing.

This is an amazing idea! I know some people want to stay with minimal feature and interface, but some others need a bit of advanced feature of their publishing projects. Considering that, .yaml is the best place to do so. My use case would add social media post links so that people can easily share or interact there. For the social media such as Instagram, pinterest and Tumblr, I prefer people to interact on my existing posts rather than create their own. As my needs are very specific, .yaml setting would be perfect for me!

I’m dying to have the ability to add custom fields too. While I do agree that Wordpress went a bit overboard with the customisations and that there is a certain beauty in Ghost’s simplicity and minimalism, I still wish there were a tad more customisation options with Ghost.

Custom fields for posts

Ideas

Constantine January 17, 2020, 7:44pm 37

Hi! We’re really need this functionality.

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Custom fields for posts

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