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i developed multiple wordpress websites and never used it because i just didn't get its purpose. can somebody explain its usefulness? also, i know custom post types, custom taxonomy and custom fields are part of wordpress core. so if i'm a developer why should i use a plugin that does just that.
One use of it is that ACF makes it super easy to build custom back end user interfaces, so that a non-dev person could theoretically log in and just fill out the required fields for a post or page, then hit Publish, and all the formatting, layout, etc. would already have been built into the page template by you beforehand. This allows you to build back ends for clients that they can easily update themselves. I don’t use the block editor but I gather ACF has a nice plugin for that as well.
Its just easier to manage, particularly for anything beyond just a text field for example, its a productivity boost I guess. I have it on well over 50 sites and don’t regret it all.
As a developer, it can take up to 10 minutes to 30 minutes for registering a custom meta box / field and etc. ACF gives us interface to do that with many options. I can create custom meta box / field and etc is 1min to 5 min. That’s the difference.
I just installed it yesterday for the first time to use with Divi Machine. Seems to be a great asset. The jury is still out in Divi Machine, for me.
ACF makes it easy to kill the performance of your site.
Essentially it gives you a quick and easy way to model data (mostly in post_meta) that you can then expose in a programatic way.
Carbon Fields FTW.
It’s the thing that makes WordPress an actual Content Management System.
Without an easy way to add content types and fields WP is a blogging platform.
I’ve used a lot of CMS’s and can’t think of any other modern one that requires editing code to add common field types. ACF makes this trivial. Unlike you I don’t think I’ve ever built a WordPress site that didn’t use ACF, at least not in the last decade.
The contentious relationship between the owners of ACF and the WP Foundation/Automattic threatens this model and does not bode well for the ecosystem. That said, the best outcome would simply be ACF functionality in core, like every other CMS out there.
Essentially a gui for making custom fields if you want the basic description.
It allows for a stupid amount of customisation and flexibility without reinventing the wheel. It’s also super easy to learn, if you already know how templates work, you essentially know how acf works
Here is a short case study…
I made an iv therapy site recently and used ACF to create the post type “iv therapy” as well as all the fields I would need to display that product such as: name, image, price, benefits, time to administer, ingredients, tagline, short and long description, etc. I could then setup a template layout with all those dynamic fields which would pull all that data for each separate product.
Without ACF, I would typically as a beginner just type all of that stuff (data fields) out as text and display it that way. It would be much more cumbersome and disorganized as just a mess of text on each page.
I like it for setting up easy input content for clients who don’t know much about websites. currently building a baking blog for a client. She can post a recipe then select a few options is it chocolate, cookie… Also I have custom coded displays for the header and subheader. She can see a text box that says subheader and type a sentence or 2, it looks way better than gutenburg. If i want to allow easy SEO without a plugin to keep the site faster, have fields for title, meta, and description so she can have each page be more unique and easily searchable. Also for the images for her recipes she can upload images that will be used on other pages like when recipes pop up in related categories when you scroll down.
Custom post types, taxonomies, fields themselves are indeed in WordPress core, but comprehensive interface for them isn’t. 🙂
ACF started out as one of the takes on building that interface conveniently.
Once Gutenberg tried to push admin development in its butchered React direction, which was accepted extremely not well, ACF also came to the rescue by providing a way to develop blocks with PHP.
I use ACF all the time. It makes building configuration pages so easy. Just think about all the stuff you have to build for a form. Input validation, styles to keep everything looking consistent, select boxes, repeater fields which allow you to kind of create a section of your form and duplicate it easily. It’s hard to understate how incredibly useful the plugin is.
I cant imagine building custom sites without ACF. It makes building out admin interfaces, custom post types, taxonomies, and meta fields so much faster and easier than hand coding. I’ve built it into my base theme and hidden it from all admin users except my Username. I know some devs don’t like doing that, but it keeps layman from messing with the settings and breaking things.
These are some wonderful answers!! Even me as no-code web designer, has learned a lot from the responses.
I built a website for campers to find RV parks and campgrounds. The biggest problem I’ve found with other sites was they don’t always list amenities available (at the time I built the site anyways), so I used ACF to create amenities fields with icons that I can add to each listing so people know what amenities are available.
I also used it to add the address for driving directions, and contact info (IE email address, phone number).
There was no plugin I could find to do this, and I’m not a programmer so writing my own addition was next to impossible. Instead I added the fields and found a little PHP code on the ACF website (or a forum related to ACF) to add to the template I created to pull the ACF data into the template where I wanted.
Helps make the most important building block in WordPress, CUSTOM POST TYPES, easy to use with a graphical interface rather than working in the functions.php file 🙂
a good case study for me.
i built a page. I wanted wordpress to create the blog posts, but i hate wordpress themes.
So i connected my page and wordpress, and now wordpress send the posts to my page and my page displays them.
But now i want to be able to change the title, the hero section, the buttons…
If wordpress only send posts how do i make wordpress be able to edit those?
enter acf.
I create a custom field named name of the buttons, and send it to my page, and now i’m able to update the name inside the buttons without touching code, just wordpress.
I love how it simplifies everything! It’s great for building flexible layouts and improving the editing experience without needing tons of custom code.
The existence of custom post types, taxonomies, and meta fields is part of core…but to date, core lacks any screen for actually creating or editing them. That’s what ACF does. You could do it in code, and many of us have…but why, when ACF does it so well already.
Back in they days before the Gutenberg editor, when we just had one “content” field ACF enabled developers to basically add as many fields as they wished, without declaring every field separately.
Ranging from just text fields to full-on repeater fields to flexible content blocks sort of like page builders.
It is both user (editor) and developer friendly.
The developer can easily make and call the field values, while the editor has a pretty good overview of the fields on the admin.
Right now ACF still does that at its core, but it has also expanded to allow for custom Gutenberg blocks while still giving developers control over the content that’s shown.
It’s especially mission-crirical when you make sites for clients and such, you have a predetermined design, make the required fields and place them where you need. The client can easily fill the fields when editing the page and you know exactly how it’s being displayed/handled.
ACF has made my life as a developer so much better. I bought a lifetime license (back when they still offered them) and used it on a handful of websites for the premium features. But the free version is good as well. And, most importantly, it doesn’t really nag you about paying (at least last time I used the free version, which was before the acquisition)