Hi everyone,
What the original post outlines is not a bug. Bricks templates (Single Page templates) are meant to work with Gutenberg content, not Bricks content. If you think that’s not how it should work, that’s an entry for the idea board. It’s already submitted, you can upvote it: Ideas – Bricks
There might be other problems / questions in this thread related to templates that I missed. If so, please be so kind to point them out to me.
So this definitely doesn’t work how Elementor’s Single Page Templates work then if that’s true. I find that strange though.
Based on what I’m hearing from you then @ribarich, that means there’s no real way for a designer to keep pages looking the same at all, right? So if I wanted say all my pages to show the page title inside a container with a background colour and a specific height, and then the actual unique page content beneath that, I can’t currently do that? How are Bricks users currently keeping all their pages using a consistent layout scheme? I’m shocked nobody has really brought this up before.
Please check out how Elementor handles “Single” templates for how I think they should work (and I’d assume most people).
I think it’s strange to consider Single templates that only work with Gutenberg content and not Bricks content itself.
Hi Alan,
It’s just a “Single” template, it doesn’t specify posts or pages specifically. So generally I’d assume it’d work for either (especially since the Conditions allow me to set pages for example).
How it works in other page builders means that I can set a template for how I want my pages to appear so they have some uniformity to them. Example: I can have a top section for the page where it shows the page title in a container with a background colour and large font size than normal, and maybe even design a two column system beneath that where there’s a small column for sharing icons and “latest news” from posts, etc. And then the main column would be the actual page content which may or may not be rendered with Bricks or Gutenberg.
Currently, the above is not possible in Bricks from what I can tell. It’s definitely not working for me anyways.
As @timmse states too, the documentation is woefully under-filled and in many cases inaccurate as things have changed in the builders which further contributes to confusion.
Hi, I’m afraid you have confused me even more, and worried me somewhat.
Having gone through all the Template stuff in the Academy I can see no mention of Gutenberg at all so I am surprised that the templates are only meant to work with it.
Are you saying that the Single template should not be used to control the display of Bricks posts? Which is how I use it and it works fine. Again the Academy suggests that it should be used for Bricks Posts.
I’ve looked at the idea you suggested but don’t think it is the same issue at all. This is far more fundamental to how Bricks works.
So I’d suggest that firstly we need some clarification and better documentation on exactly how the whole Template system is supposed to work. Esp if there is split functions between Gutenberg and Bricks. That might save a lot of questions.
If you want a particular issue. How is the Section Templates supposed to work? As mentioned above they work if adding to a bricks page using the Template Element but the Template Conditions do not seem to work.
Thanks
Alan
Hi, Yes I agree documentation is probably the cause of a lot of confusion. Equally the apparent dual purpose of the templates is confusing. Maybe there needs to be some sanitation in the configuration so that if you select “Single” template then it will only allow you to choose “Posts” or whatever.
I’ve not used templates the way you describe but it sounds more like a default starting point. So when you create a new page it starts off with your custom design each time so you only need to add that pages specific content. Maybe this can be achieved with global styles and section templates?
I suspect that Community Templates are also causing confusion as they behave differently to the Bricks Templates like Single, Header, footer etc. Maybe a better distinction between the two would help?
Cheers
Alan
We’re drifting a bit off the topic, but …
Like @alanj and @d19dotca said, a complete, structured and up-to-date documentation would help us all and save an unbelievable amount of questions and hours of trial and error.
Even if a lot is self-explanatory (from your point of view), for most users it probably isn’t.
At the moment I don’t really know whether this or that is a bug or a feature … and that doesn’t really feel good. So please: Push features back and start documenting 
Interesting, I assumed most people used it that way. 
Maybe I’m not using it the standard way. I’ve developed about 20+ sites in Elementor and Elementor Pro and used that design practice on almost all of them.
The only workaround I’ve found is adding the Template element to my pages that then point to the Single Page Template I created. That way when I change the colours of the top section with the page title or the size of the container, it’s reproduced on all pages.
I agree. I think there definitely needs some documentation updates for sure.
Hi, Elementor has more Template options than Bricks. It has a SIngle Page, Single Post, Page and plain old Single. So I think we are trying to force all those functions into a single Bricks Template and its not working.
It would depend on the type of sites you build and way of working if this is a big or small problem.
For instance I generally build listing sites using CPT’s. As such I have very few pages - so easy to hand style alike. Most of the design is handled by Single Post templates which gives a single place to control the design. So for me having a common Page design isn’t that important. Obviously others mileage will vary.
Cheers
Alan
Some terminology:
post_content) and attached to a post.Note how a post/page can have both WordPress data and Bricks data.
There is no element currently that renders Bricks data. So Bricks data cannot be rendered in a template. If a template applies to a post/page, Bricks data will be overriden.
So if I wanted say all my pages to show the page title inside a container with a background colour and a specific height, and then the actual unique page content beneath that, I can’t currently do that?
I’m afraid not, or at least not yet. We will add an “Inner Content” element which renders Bricks data if people ask for it. It currently has around 70 upvotes on the idea board. However, you can create a global element and insert it on every page.
Are you saying that the Single template should not be used to control the display of Bricks posts? Which is how I use it and it works fine. Again the Academy suggests that it should be used for Bricks Posts.
Yep, there’s no template which can be used to render Bricks data. Only WordPress data.
I will update An Intro To Templates – Bricks Academy to make this clearer.
Hope that clears things up.
Thank you for clarifying, @ribarich I’m very surprised that this isn’t a default feature (I can include Gutenberg data but not Bricks’ own data? Seems like an oversight IMO).
I’ll upvote the feature request and hope for it in the future. I guess I may not be able to use Bricks for too many sites just yet then as I’m looking to convert many from Elementor to Bricks in the future. I guess I’ll need to stick to the two single-page websites for now. I thought Bricks was far enough along for me but maybe not quite yet as I didn’t realize that was a current limitation (which is a big one to me).
Thanks again for the clarification.
PS - it seems there may be two duplicate feature requests (or at least very similar)…. So you may have more votes than you think.
@ribarich Thanks for clarifying. Not good news though and as @d19dotca says not being able to use native Bricks even to create a plain blog post is a huge oversight. Certainly scuppers my plans.
There are fewer votes than might be expected because I don’t think everyone really understands what the ideas mean - I certainly didn’t, esp the Inner Content one.
So for my case … I create Custom Posts using Metabox. I then use the Single Template to display them. This works - Is this because the data saved by the CPT is classed as Wordpress data? I don’t use Gutenburg at all and do not save its data.
Thanks
Alan
@d19dotca Those 2 idea board entries are not exactly the same. The second one “Ability to add…” is about making it possible to add Bricks content within Gutenberg, which is already possible with Bricks template shortcodes, so we’ll probably close that suggestion.
We are having some discussions within the team about this. I’ll reply to this thread in a few days if there are any news.
Thank you! I look forward to hearing from you about this, as I (and others) really do see this as a large oversight / bug (even if it’s not technically a bug since it sounds like it’s working as designed) which needs to be a priority focus for the Single templates to be of any real use. Additionally, every other page builder does it the way we are requesting, so hoping Bricks follows suit too as that’s how users would expect it to work.
Hi @ribarich, I was hoping there may be an update you can share at this time with us. Please. Thank you in advance. At the moment, the current behaviour is preventing me from going “all-in” on Bricks Builder for my client sites.
Hi @d19dotca,
I am happy to inform you that after some discussion we decided we’ll add this feature to Bricks. It’s added to our system and it will be available soon. We’ll probably make it as a toggle on the “Post Content” element where you can choose between Bricks data and WordPress data.
Hmmm, good, I think.
But can you explain exactly what “Bricks” data actually is?
To me the data is just data. I don’t differentiate between Wordpress, Bricks, Gutenburg or Metabox/ACF. Aren’t they all just data that we then use a template or page/post to display?
Personally it would make more sense to me for Bricks to be data agnostic, much like many of us dumb users.
Cheers
Alan
@ribarich - that’s perfect! Very happy to hear that. And that sounds fair to have a toggle on the Post Content element to look at where to pull the data from. Thank you so much for listening to user feedback. Hope to see that soon.
@alanj - The data from any source will usually be stored in a different method, meaning the portion of the website which needs to “decrypt” or “interpret” the data must understand the source to know how to display it properly. They come from different parts of the database too, when you’re referencing things like Meta Box / ACF, as they generally create their own tables for custom fields. So all in all, the “data” may be the same in the end, but they are pulled from different areas of the website’s database and interpreted in different ways. That’s why Bricks will need to understand where the data is coming from and where it was written, etc in order to properly render it on the front-end. As such, I think it’d be nearly impossible to be “data agnostic” unless it can become smart enough down the road to know what is what automatically without user intervention. Hope that helps clarify that a bit.
Yep understand the difficulties, but that’s what computers/software are for, to make life easier!
To turn your argument on its head I go back to asking how I know what data is where? I use multiple plugins. So maybe I use bricks to display a form to create a CPT made in Metabox. Whose data is that? Is it Bricks or Metabox? Bricks knows about the Metabox fields ( or ACF if you prefer ).
I’m not trying to be difficult. I genuinely don’t understand the differences when multiple tools are used together. Not the mechanics of how to access different tools data but how you know whose data it actually is.
My worry with a toggle is that it then limits the Posts element to only use a single source.
I think I’ve confused myself now. Back in the hutch.
I don’t think it’s worthwhile to think about other sources of data here like Metabox. I’ve explained the terminology a few posts above PLANNED: Single Page Templates removes/hides previously added Bricks Builder content on Pages - #22 by ribarich So there’s only a distiction between “WordPress data” and “Bricks data”
Advanced and unnecessary: WordPress posts are fundamentally entries in wp_posts MySQL table. When you put some elements in Gutenberg and click save, that stuff is saved in the wp_posts table under post_content. But when you go to Bricks builder, make some elements, and click save, that’s not saved under post_content, but rather it’s saved in the wp_meta table and associated with the appropriate post. So when a post is being rendered, Bricks needs to choose whether to use post_content from wp_posts (WordPress data) or metadata about a post from wp_meta (Bricks data).
