Smithy Connect fetches and writes any data in your database, then makes it available to Breakdance as dynamic data, a form-save target, or a display condition — for templates, queries and individual elements. If a plugin you rely on isn’t natively compatible with Breakdance but tracks something useful — an event date, a membership tier, a custom status — Connect can fetch that value and put it to work, or let a form save straight back into it. It also drives Breakdance’s dynamic select-dropdown population and bundles per-post, per-user and site-wide image/gallery fields.

Requirements

WordPress 6.4 or later, PHP 8.2 or later, and Breakdance itself — a hard requirement, not a soft one. Connect checks for Breakdance on load; if it isn’t active, the plugin shows an admin notice and stops there rather than registering anything.

No dependency on Smithy Factory Core or any other Smithy Factory plugin — Connect is fully standalone, so it installs and works the same whether or not the rest of the suite is present.

Install & activate

Install and activate the plugin the normal way — upload the zip via Plugins → Add Plugin → Upload Plugin, or drop the folder into wp-content/plugins and activate from the Plugins screen. There’s no setup wizard. Unlike Core, Elements, Forms and Icons, Connect doesn’t share the “Smithy Factory” sidebar menu — it gets its own top-level “Smithy Connect” menu, with Dynamic Data, Field Categories, Global Galleries, Import / Export, License and Dev Reference underneath.

First run

The main screen is Dynamic Data — a list of registered fields (empty on a fresh install) plus an “Add New Field” form beneath it. Every field starts with a Label and an auto-generated Slug (the value you’ll use in PHP or form actions), then a Category for grouping fields in Breakdance’s Dynamic Data picker, a Source Type (Post Meta, User Meta, WP Option, Custom Table, or one of Connect’s own native tables), the Meta Key/Column that holds the data, a Lookup Source, a Data Type, a Return Type, and an optional checkbox to expose the field as a condition in Breakdance’s visibility, template and query builders.

Worth knowing before you create your first field: Connect is deliberately unrestricted about what it can read from and write to, which means it’s also possible to wire a field up badly — pointing a form at a core option like the site URL, for instance — and cause real damage. It won’t stop you from doing something unwise; that flexibility is the point. Creating fields, the different source and data types, and Connect’s condition and image/gallery features are covered in their own page.