Relationships between collections?

MrHasBean
MrHasBean Member Posts: 10

Hi!

New to the community and evaluating Duda to determine if it has the feature set I need to move my sites over. Presently I use WordPress with Advanced Custom Fields or Pods and heavily utilise the capability of creating bi-directional relationships between fields in custom post types (Collections). There are other pluses and minuses for Duda, but currently a lot falling on the plus side. This one would pretty much be a deal breaker for me though. I'm playing with the free trial at present so I'm hoping there are features that I'm not seeing which might be able to achieve this?

Cheers!

Best Answers

  • Bruce_McCaughan
    Bruce_McCaughan Member Posts: 124 Learner
    Answer ✓

    Hi MrHasBeen,

    The other people tagged here are MUCH bigger stars than I, and they are all true MacGyver's when it comes to this stuff.

    That said, my experience with "Collections" is that it is overly basic. What is called "dynamic pages" would be more correctly called "Cookie-Cutter Pages" as all you can do is spin out several pages on a common template. There is no dynamic ability within the page itself. Filtering collections is also pretty much non-existent.

    I would hate for this to be a deal breaker for you, as Duda has a lot of good things about it (for simple, static sites). But it's not quite ready for truly dynamic applications IMHO.

    Good luck, and hopefully the others have better answers for you :-)

    Best,

    Bruce

  • Aj_Cre8
    Aj_Cre8 Member Posts: 628 MVP
    Answer ✓

    So, this seems pretty simple actually. You can utilize the external collections using AirTable and create pretty advanced widgets that will connect to that collection. The collection can show everything you need it to show in regards to (using your example) conditions, practitioners etc... It can work just like you would expect ACF to work, but to be transparent, it will require a little more work to make it work that way. I am going to tag a few additional experts here to get their inputs as well. @Shane_Hodge and his team build advanced custom widgets utilizing Collections DAILY. They can also get it to work more like ACF if you wish and are willing to spend some time explaining things. @Elizabeth_Fedak is a Dynamic Widget Guru who may already have something your looking for. @nat_rosasco and his team are also Duda Solutions partners who can get this built for you as well. If you are savvy with HTML, CSS, and JS you can build out your own custom widgets utilizing the Duda Widget builder that will allow you to do everything you are wanting to do. The best thing to do would be to Mockup how you want the collections to look, and how you want them to work on the site. So, to answer your initial question YES, YOU CAN DO THIS WITH DUDA so that its easy to use across multiple sites. We do not use 3rd party solutions (such as plugins for wp like ACF). The Award Winning Duda Widget builder is your best friend in this situation.

«1

Answers

  • community_manager
    community_manager Administrator, Moderator Posts: 297 Duda Staff

    Hi @MrHasBean!

    Welcome to the Dudaverse 🍾

    I'm tagging a few of our all stars who may be able to help with this question: @courtneyquaresimo, @Elizabeth_Fedak, @Aj_Cre8 and @Bruce_McCaughan.

  • MrHasBean
    MrHasBean Member Posts: 10

    Thank you for the responses @Sheyla and @Bruce_McCaughan! Greatly appreciated.

    Unfortunately it would be extremely difficult to replicate the functionality that I rely on in most of my sites without related fields and the subsequent ability to filter based on relationships. It is a shame because there is much about Duda I find very attractive. I will probably consider it for another niche and the more static sites.

    Cheers again for the very prompt responses. 👍️

    Regards,

    Steve

  • Aj_Cre8
    Aj_Cre8 Member Posts: 628 MVP

    Welcome to Duda. So it would help us out a little bit more if we really understood what you were utilizing ACF for. We understand the need for collections and we understand why we use collections but we don't understand why you are using ACF. You can break down a little bit about what your site does and what kind of capabilities you need We can provide more guidance. There are a lot of experts out there with duda that can build customized widgets within the duda widget builder that could possibly match the functionality that you need that you are currently getting with ACF.

  • MrHasBean
    MrHasBean Member Posts: 10

    Thank you for taking the time to respond.

    Presently we use either ACF or Pods on WordPress to create custom post types (Collections); obviously WordPress doesn't have that functionality by default other than via code - ACF / Pods are just easier, more elegant options. Both of those packages are supported by the major page builders on WordPress - Beaver, Elementor, etc. Via those packages it is possible to display content related to the current post.

    So for example, if we took a gaming site where we have custom post types (collections) for games, developers, platforms, etc. On the page that shows all of the information about a particular developer, I can also dynamically display all of the games they produce and the platforms they support, with that content being populated dynamically via the relationships, and those items linking to the page about that particular game or platform. When the client is adding the content, adding items to the developer collection automatically populates the related field in the games collection, and vice versa.

    Another example might be a healthcare practice which offers different modalities and treatments for various conditions. Relationships between the practitioners, services and conditions collections could, for example, allow the services offered by the practitioner to dynamically display on their bio page. Similarly a particular condition might show the modalities (services) which can treat the condition, with that related content linking to the service page. If a visitor finds the condition page via a SERP link, by then clicking through to the page for a related service they could then (dynamically) see which practitioners at the practice are qualified to deliver that service, then further click through to their bio page to read about them / book an appointment with them. While I understand that this can be done manually, related fields make the process very simple and negates the requirement for double entry of data.

    From what I can see at present this functionality isn't available in Collections on Duda?

    Does that help clarify the application? Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

  • Aj_Cre8
    Aj_Cre8 Member Posts: 628 MVP

    Its seems (and correct me if I am wrong) that you are looking for advanced Directories and such. Sites that offer both a Directory of items (games, or doctors etc) as well as a filterable search for said directories?

  • MrHasBean
    MrHasBean Member Posts: 10

    No, just the ability to have related information presented on a website.

    Take the clinic example. That would just be the clinic / practice's website showing the bios of their practitioners with related content on that bio page being the services (modalities) that practitioner is qualified to deliver.

    For example at an allied healthcare practice their services might be say Physiotherapy, Osteopathy, Massage Therapy, Podiatry. The clinic's website might have a collection of condition articles, say Back Pain, Neck Pain, Sciatica, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Achilles Tendonitis etc. If we took Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, the services they offer that can treat that would be Osteopathy and Physiotherapy so they would dynamically appear on the CTS page as "Related Services", if the visitor selected one of those services, say Physiotherapy, they would be taken to the Physiotherapy service page which would also show "Related Practitioners" with a dynamically populated list of the Physiotherapists at the clinic. The visitor could then click through to the Physio's bio and optionally book an appointment.

    So it isn't a directory site, just having relevant related content available on any site. It helps navigation and conversions.

    The same for the game site. It might just be a game review site, but having the related content dynamically loaded makes navigation easier and quicker.

    There are numerous examples where these kinds of related content can be beneficial, and the entire process is significantly easier if it is dynamically populated from (bi-directional) relationships.

  • Aj_Cre8
    Aj_Cre8 Member Posts: 628 MVP

    Mind showing an example?

  • MrHasBean
    MrHasBean Member Posts: 10

    Sure.

    I mocked something up in Duda based on a template, but of course had to do all the "related" elements manually. Following the healthcare site example I gave, if you go to the following preview link it will land you on the "Neck Pain" page, from there the related services show, the only one that is active is Physiotherapy, if you click that it will take you to the Physiotherapy page, which shows related practitioners (Physiotherapists), the only one of which is active is Dan Crowning, so that link will take you to his bio page, where you can also see the "Related Services", which are the services that particular practitioner is qualified to deliver, which obviously link back to the information about that service.

    Note that I haven't done any of the mobile layout tweaking, so I'm not sure how those layouts will look, hence the link for the desktop preview:

    https://mrhasbean.responsivewebsitebuilder.io/site/979cd8ff/neck-pain?preview=true&insitepreview=true&dm_device=desktop