Hi guys.
I’m looking to put together a proof-of-concept front end editor for AFC. Before I make a start, I figure I’d put this out there to the community who I’m sure collectively have more knowledge than just myself.
Here’s how I’d ideally like to UI to work:
1) A logged in user visits a post (this could be a page, post or CPT) on the front-end of the site
2) When a user hovers over a field a pencil icon or similar would appear (or perhaps there’s just a permanently fixed icon next to all the fields)
3) The icon (on click) triggers a modal window which loads in the standard UI that comes with AFC that we see in the backend for that particular field
4) Edits are made and an accept button is clicked
5) Importantly, when a field is saved, it does not save the new data to the post but rather just reflects the changes to preview
6) When all the edits are made, a separate save changes button is clicked which then saves the new data to the post/page and therefore to the front-end for all visitors
For me and my clients, this would be excellent. I frequently get requests about front-end editing but I’ve never found a solution that works well for me, they’re either half-baked or just don’t really work. Often, the authors have tried to reinvent how the editing UI works i.e. with inline editors but this seems like reinventing the wheel when so much effort and time has been put into getting the AFC UI just right. For example, I would love to be able to use a repeater field on the front-end using the AFC repeater UI, then when I OK the modal, I see the repeater rendered within the actual front-end of the website to preview.
What does everyone think, possible? There’s obviously Live Edit (https://wordpress.org/plugins/live-edit/screenshots) but the main issue I have here is that for me the main purpose of a front-end editor is to preview the content in situ before pushing it live and with Live Edit you have to save to see the changes. I found this today: https://github.com/HorionDigital/advanced-custom-fields-front-end-editor which is great and previews the content before saving but it replaces the AFC editing tools and only supports text, text area and WYSIWYG fields.
