Advanced Custom Fields – Powerful, Professional and Intuitive

Another small plugin that has recently come to light here at ShadowoodPress is this little gem, called Advanced Custom Fields. So what exactly are custom field in WordPress?

Well, the WordPress core setup defines custom fields in this manner:

WordPress has the ability to allow post authors to assign custom fields to a post. This arbitrary extra information is known as meta-data. This meta-data can include bits of information such as:

• Mood: Happy
• Currently Reading: Cinderella
• Listening To: Rock Around the Clock
• Weather: Hot and humid

With some extra coding, it is possible to achieve more complex actions, such as using the metadata to store an expiration date for a post.

– https://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Fields

Custom field allow you to create repeatable data fields, of various types in order to facilitate publishing more quickly. The example that WordPress uses goes like this:

A reader wishes to enter book titles, so they might enter a custom field named “Book Title”. Then each time thy need to reference a book title that can add a custom field and then enter the relevant title.

In actuality, why not just write out “book Title: some book title” each time instead of using the custom field? well, most of the time I used to. Until I found this plugin.

The Advanced portion of Advance Custom Field plugin is that you have a greater control over what the custom fields will do. An example of this is The block below where I put the plugin information for the name, the author, etc, is now a custom text block that ONLY shows when I create either a plugin of the week or plugin update post.

If I pick some other category for a post, then that custom field does not even show up for me. This was a function that is not part of the default WordPress custom fields functionality.

From The Author

This plugin allows for you to enter in those fields and data entry options that you are using on a regular recurring basis. Sure some of the smaller data fields you might enter can just be added on the fly, but if you have posts that can be repetitive in nature, like a routinely posted plugin feature, then this can be a godsend.

As I have avoided custom fields for so long I know that I am not even coming close to utilizing this plugin to its fullest. I will continue to experiment with the flexibility that it can give me while editing posts.

With updates as recently as this week and over a millions active installation, the developer has hit a winner of a plugin in my book.

Advanced Custom Fields

Version: 4.4.10
Author: elliotcondon
Last Updated: 10/1/2016
Requires: 3.5+ or higher
Compatible up to: 4.7
Average 5-Star Rating: 4.9

4.4.10

• WYSIWYG field: Fixed JS error preventing tinymce from initializing

4.4.9

• Image field: Added nicer ‘Edit image’ view
• File field: Added nicer ‘Edit file’ view

4.4.8

• Google Map: Added new ‘acf/fields/google_map/api’ filter

4.4.7

• Relationship field: Fixed bug preventing values from being selected in WP 4.5
• Google Map field: Fixed bug preventing map to load within repeater field
• Core: Fixed PHP error when loading ACF values on ‘The Events Calendar’ (plugin) page
• Language: Updated Portuguese translation – thanks to Pedro Mendonca

4.4.6

• Google Map field: Improved compatibility with 3rd party plugins including Google JS API
• API: Improved get_ functions to load value from the current queried object (post, user, term)
• Core: Added support for new WP 4.5 term edit page
• Language: Updated Portuguese translation – thanks to Pedro Mendonca
• Language: Added Welsh translation – thanks to Carl Morris
• Language: Added Indonesian translation – thanks to Rio Bermano