Adding State (location) Field

Has anyone found a way to add a field for State to 7.0? If so, can you provide detailed instructions? I am new, have bought a permanent license and unfortunately, I have already spent a lot of money getting Dolphin the way I need it and cannot easily walk away from using it. However, not having a field for state is a deal breaker for the use of Dolphin.

EDIT: By the way, I have searched the forums and found nothing helpful. Some question the need for a State field. Most of my potential customers will be in the U.S. and as most people know, the U.S. uses City, State and Zip for defining a location. As an example, the name of my city is also the name of cities in several other states and is practically useless without the state information.

Thank you,

BSN

First, create a Predefined list. Admin Panel -> Settings -> Predefined Values.

Next to select a list, choose Create New. Call it State. Under the table, I laid mine out like this:

Value: MN | LKey: Minnesota
Value: MI | LKey: Missouri

You can get fancy with the Language keys if you want to define a language key for each state, but I wouldn't worry about it if you are primarily an english site.

After you build your predefined list, it's time to create the profile field. You can do this from within the admin menu, Builders -> Profile Fields.

Drag the New Item box to the active items. Click the box to edit details. Here's how I set mine up:

General tab
System Name: State

Caption: State

Description: Please select your State.

Type: Selector

Advanced tab
Selector control: Select (Dropdown box)

Mandatory: Checked

Possible Values: (click the little book icon for change link). You want to enter in #!State

Used Lang. key: LKEY

Hit Save & that should be it!

It's been a while since I set mine up, and I actually quit using it since we started taking on Canadian users, they didn't like that they couldn't select their state. My challenge now is to create a country selector, then populate a states list based on country. It was easier just to scrap the idea and let everyone locate off of zip code instead.

Not having states integrated with the core code is a serious downer for me.

Thank you, that was very helpful and the method I will use for now. Later, I will look to add a table for State, Region, County, Territory that will allow the user to populate the information if I cannot find a good tool for auto-filling based on ZIP. Of course a quick search for "city" in PHP pages found 41 occurrences in 16 files - each likely requiring similar "state" entries. So, a bit of work, but not unmanageable.

There should be a way to get this done at the core. It seems to be common enough a request and a major inconvenience for U.S. based companies.

Quick update to what I ended up doing to add all U.S. States and Territories and Canadian Provinces and Territories.

Admin > Builders > Profile Fields > New Block

GENERAL TAB

System Name: State

Caption: State/Territory/Province

Description: Please select your State, Territory or Province.

Type: Selector

ADVANCED TAB

Selector Control: Select (Dropdown Box)

Mandatory: Checked (yes)

Possible Values: 

- None Selected -
AL - Alabama
AS - American Samoa
AK - Alaska
AZ - Arizona
AR - Arkansas
CA - California
CO - Colorado
CT - Connecticut
DE - Delaware
DC - District of Columbia
FL - Florida
GA - Georgia
GU - Guam
HI - Hawaii
ID - Idaho
IL - Illinois
IN - Indiana
IA - Iowa
KS - Kansas
KY - Kentucky
LA - Louisiana
ME - Maine
MD - Maryland
MA - Massachusetts
MI - Michigan
MN - Minnesota
MS - Mississippi
MO - Missouri
MT - Montana
NE - Nebraska
NV - Nevada
NH - New Hampshire
NJ - New Jersey
NM - New Mexico
NY - New York
NC - North Carolina
ND - North Dakota
MP - Northern Mariana Islands
OH - Ohio
OK - Oklahoma
OR - Oregon
PA - Pennsylvania
PR - Puerto Rico
RI - Rhode Island
SC - South Carolina
SD - South Dakota
TN - Tennessee
TX - Texas
VI - U.S. Virgin Islands
UT - Utah
VT - Vermont
VA - Virginia
WA - Washington
WV - West Virginia
WI - Wisconsin
WY - Wyoming
- CANADIAN PROVINCES/Territories -
AB - Alberta
BC - British Columbia
MB - Manitoba
NB - New Brunswick
NL - Newfoundland and Labrador
NS - Nova Scotia
ON - Ontario
PE - Prince Edward Island
QC - Québec
SK - Saskatchewan
NT - Northwest Territories
NU - Nunavut
YT - Yukon
- NOT APPLICABLE - 

Used lang. key: LKey

Default value:

MESSAGES TAB

Mandatory Error Message: You must make a selection. If not applicable, choose "- Not Applicable -" (at the bottom).

--------------------------------------------

Leave other tabs alone unless you know what you are doing.

I am now searching for all PHP pages referencing Country, City and making changes to show Country, City, State and in some cases Zip (which I also modified to show as Zip vs. zip for consistency).

Hope this helps someone.

BSN

Funny, I forgot that I wrote this up, doing a search and found my own post. Anyone come up with a better way yet? 

EDIT: Found while doing this for another site.