Thread

I’m working on a website for a self storage complex and I’m creating a custom group for locations.

My question:

Should I create one text field for “Address” or multiple text fields, one for “Street Address”, “City”, “State”, “Zip”, etc.

Are there any real benefits to having independent fields? How have you used addresses in custom field groups?

There’s no cut and dry answer to this, it all depends on your needs.
Consider the difference between:

<address>{address}</address>

and

<dl>
    <dt>{name}</dt>
        <dd>{street}</dd>
        <dd>{city}</dd>
        <dd>{tel_nr}</dd>
</dl>

In the first example you can get away with 1 custom field, in the other you might need the added flexibility of more custom fields. Your call 😊

I almost always use multiple fields. Quite often, there’s something down the line which you didn’t need at first (sorting by zip, distance calculation, etc.)

As e-man pointed out, there is no final answer. Regarding the benefits: If you need to guarantee that some detailed information is entered (verification) or if you want to be able to compare, sort or otherwise evaluate or reuse details, then a separate custom field (perhaps with formatting set to ‘none’) is useful. If the information is just informal, it is much easier to enter them in a single textarea field.

-Markus

Edit: Ingmar was faster 😉

Thanks guys, I think I’ll use multiple fields.