Hi and welcome!
Firstly, there's no need to apologise for asking a question. We were all newbies at some point!!!
Where I'm having trouble is... what Wizards and Data Fields do I use on my form and how?? do i use a "default text string" for the users first name, last name and address details? and an 'integer' field for their phone number?
Well, all of this depends upon your needs...
From reading your post and looking at your mockup, it seems to me that all of the user data you are concerned with might be considered profile information, right? I mean, this is the sort of data that your users would provide at the point of registration.
If so, I think that you would be best using a user profile plugin - please see this post in the thread you've been reading already:
www.j-cook.pro/forum/7-design-your-appli...-with-relations#5896 - links to relevant stuff in the post.
Advantages
- Useful for the storing data that will be the same type for the same type of users
- Can be different for different types of users
- Will allow you to immediately access user info upon login, registration, logout etc through plugins
Then, using the user type field in Cook, you can create component specific records relating to the user. To clarify, you might wan't to use the author wizard to capture automatically the user filling in the data. This is useful for tasks where you want the user to be able to create multiple entries of something - like booking a gym session, logging their training activities or diet plan etc.
Of course, this could all be accessible on their profile page too via a module if you wanted.
In short, Profile = Data that is stored once for everyone
Component records = Data that you would most likely want the user to keep adding to n times.
Of course, this you could limit the user being able to create only one or any number of records inside your component but I think that the above distinction is a pretty good basis on which to decide what kind of data belongs where. This would be where custom coding would need to take over.
naturally, if you have user data that you only want the 'creator' to access, for instance a training diary or something, then yes, some of the posts you linked to have the answers.
Hope this helps,
Gez
