There are situations where you have one custom field that will be used in multiple field groups, like a Body WYSIWYG field. An alternative to duplicating the field for every field group would be to use Gypsy or Drifter.

A nicer solution might be to separate custom fields so you build all of your custom fields independent of field groups. Then when you create a field group, you pick and choose which custom fields you want to include.

I support this thread.

+1

+1. Brandon Kelly has quite the article on this:

http://brandon-kelly.com/blog/custom-fields

I knew I remember reading something about it a while ago, but couldn’t remember where from. Thanks for linking to that. I don’t even care if the interface is all that nice from the start; I just want the functionality to build field groups from all custom fields.

+1

+1

+1

Like having members in multiple member groups, this would require a huge architectural change. In other words, don’t hold your breath. Maybe in EE3?

But seriously, I have gotten used to this and actually now prefer to not re-use fields in different channels. I like to namespace my fields with the name of the channel (like news_body) and just take the extra five minutes to create a similar field in a different channel, like blog_body.

+1 but there must be a reason behind why this is not done - otherwise i can see no logic for it to be done this way at present.

@Rob-
Re-using fields makes it soooo much easier to write global RSS feeds and reusable templates. I know it’s a big architecture change, but it doesn’t seem impossible.

I’m with Rob on this one…

i used Gypsy in EE 1.0 and it got confusing, i also like to prefix fields with the channel name i.e. news_body and think that’s a clean approach, although it would be nice if EE allowed for duplicate names on different channels, i.e. i could use the field name body in my news channel and event channel, that could save some time playing with templates to ensure they have the correct field name.

+1

To alleviate that, I would do something like this:

@matthew - that is kind of the point - if you were allowed to have one field in two channel groups, there would be no need for the prefix, as you would not be replicating it! I too currently do this, but not out of choice!

@Rob, cheers for that never thought about doing it that way

Rob, that is genius and yet should have been so obvious

@Rob-
Makes total sense, but you shouldn’t have to do something like that if the body field in news and events are exactly the same.

@nevsie I suppose, but there’s always times where you want to change a field for a specific channel in some way then you realise you’ve got it shared across multiple channels and then you’re screwed…