A new major version of Articles Field has been released, and comes with various improvements and a revamped documentation.

Articles Field by Regular Labs is a Joomla! custom field plugin that greatly extends the capabilities of custom fields. It gives you the ability to choose from a list of articles (based on the selected filters), allowing you to directly connect articles to each other. The result on the frontend is a list of the selected articles, that can even displayed with a custom layout.

A refactored version of Articles Field, version 3, has been released today, and the documentation has been expanded as well.

Separate Field Types PRO

For those familiar with the Pro version of Articles Field, the main change in version 3.0 pertains to the two different Field Types, previously called "Link Articles" and "Show Linked Articles".

Instead of being selectable as an option when creating the custom field, they have now been split in two distinct plugins.

The separation allows for better, future-proof stability for each field type individually. It also now allows to distinguish at a glance which type the custom field is using from the Fields list view.

  • The main "Articles" Field type (articles) gives you the ability to choose from a list of articles (based on the selected filters), allowing you to directly connect articles to each other. This is also available in the Free version.

  • The Pro version also comes with the additional "Articles - Linked" Field type (articleslinked). This field gives you the ability to automatically show, in an article, all the articles that are linked to it via instances of the "Articles" Field type. This makes it possible to have both articles automatically link back and forth to each other.

The migration is seamless, as installing version 3 will automatically convert all previous instances of the "Show Linked Articles" field type to the new "Articles - Linked" plugin. So functionality will remain the same, with action required by the user.

Usage Example

Here is an example of how you can use Articles Field.

Say you have a website about Movies. You have 3 main categories with articles: one for the "Movies", one for the "Actors" and one for the "Directors".

On each Movie page you want to list the Actors and the Director(s) associated with that movie, linking to their respective article page:

  • Create two custom field instances of the "Articles" Field, and assign them to appear on articles of the "Movies" category.
  • Name one custom field "Directed by" and set the Filter by Categories to the "Directors" category.
  • Name one custom field "Cast", and set the Filter by Categories to the "Actors" category.

Now when you create/edit a Movie article, you will see these two custom fields. One will list all the "Directors" articles and the other all the "Actors" articles. You can select the actors and the director(s) from those list fields.

When you go to the Movie article on the frontend of your website, you will now see the output of the two custom fields. Each will list the selected articles (actors and directors) as clickable titles. Clicking on one of these will take you to the respective article.

And what if in each Actor page you want to automatically show all the Movies where the actor starred in? You can do this with the Pro version of Articles Field:

  • Simply create an instance of the "Articles - Linked" Field, name it "Starred in", and assign it to appear on articles of the "Actors" category.
  • In the Linked Fields setting, select the "Cast" custom field.

This will show in the frontend a list of movies that are linked to an Actor via the "Cast" field of the "Movies" category. Now when you create/edit an Actor article, you have the ability to switch on a field to show the linked movies articles.

Changelog for Articles Field 3

  • Split the plugin into 2 separate field types: "Articles" and "Articles - Linked" PRO
  • Improves behavior of the Linked Fields option for the field type "Articles - Linked" PRO
  • Fixes issue with php notice about array to string conversion on certain HikaShop pages
  • Adds translations: zh-CN

Read the Changelog for Articles Field 3.0 for the list of improvements and fixes that have been made in the new release.

There are a lot more cool features and options to explore in Articles Field. Head over to the full Documentation for a complete overview and to find more treasures.