A customer just lost all their field data after deleting a Wygwam field: http://help.pixelandtonic.com/brandonkelly/topics/not_showing_text_when_editing_a_page
I know that’s obvious to us, but noobs who haven’t wrapped their mind around EE’s custom fields concept are always caught off guard when their data is deleted, either because they deleted a custom field or uninstalled a fieldtype. (I see it all the time.)
It might help a little if EE actually did a better job warning you about the data deletion. Currently if you delete a custom field, there’s no mention of it at all. Just “Are you sure you want to permanently delete this Channel Field?”
Deleting a fieldtype is a little better: “All data associated with this fieldtype, including all associated channel data, will be permanently deleted!” But still – since it’s something people don’t expect (I think most people assume those fields will just default to Textarea’s or something), many people miss it.
In both cases, I think you could save a lot of people’s frustration by making big bold warnings about how they’re about to delete not just their field/fieldtype, but all of the data associated with it.
Hi Brandon,
Thank you for bringing this up, it’s really unacceptable for the notifications to not be super clear on something of this nature, where potential data loss is concerned.
This is a great example of the UX being geared towards developers not end users.
I’ve added this to my list and will be working to address this.
Thanks again Brandon.
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