Asset Meta Fields vs Section with Asset field + the other fields?

Question

Let's say we have products, and some of these products have a Firmware Update file (or several firmware update files) that may be associated with the product entry.

The Firmware file assets will have associated "metadata" for each, including:

• Version
• Region
• Release Date
• Notes
• Install Instructions

My question is would it be better to add a new section for Firmware, with separate fields for the above (plus associated Product and Firmware Asset Entry), or just have the Asset contain all those fields as metadata on the asset entry itself?

I guess this might be a philosophical question. Maybe it will be flagged as too subjective, but I thought I'd ask.

Answer 1

Other that the actual usability considerations for admins, the other advantage of creating a separate section for Firmware would be that your Firmware entries, unlike assets, come with all the extra properties of entries like Author, Slug, Post Date, Expiration Date, and status. If entries have their own URLs, you can also use the live preview feature.

Also, if you're relating file assets to Firmware entries, you would be able to swap out assets easily if you needed to replace one. Otherwise, if all the metadata was contained in just asset fields, you would have to copy and paste or re-enter all that info from the old asset into the new one.

You may want to connect only some of the metadata to an asset tho, like say the version or region. That might make actually make it easier for admins to find the right asset in a sea of files names.

Answer 2

Personally I would add the fields to the asset. Totally depends on what order you prefer to fill in the data.

Are you going to fill in all the data yourself or a client? If so, ask them what they prefer.

Answer 3

Because the asset fields rely on a double-click to access a modal containing the fields, I don't normally use a lot of them because I find clients prefer having more space to work. Especially so when the fields include Rich Text.

In your case, you could first try taking the asset fields route and see how easy it is to complete the fields. But, I'd probably create a section for Firmware with an Entries field linking it to the Product. The client would have more room to work for, say, the notes and firmware instructions. And you could quite easily list older versions of the firmware on the product page (I know you could do that if they were assets but I think this would be easier to manage if there were regular firmware updates being made).

*By the way, designing the control panel is an essential skill for getting the most out of Craft CMS so I'd say this isn't subjective at all. I don't think it matters that there is no one definitive answer.