![The December 2014 cover of php[architect] magazine](https://stevegrunwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cover-900x1165.png)
In case you missed it yesterday, my article, Advanced Sites Deserve Advanced Custom Fields, has been published in the December issue of php[architect]. This marks my first feature-length magazine article!
Tag: Advanced Custom Fields
At first glance, T-Pro Solutions is a pretty typical marketing site: hero carousel, big banner images on each page, and a whole mess of calls-to-action. There's nothing wrong with a site like this, but they're not always the most exciting to build. T-Pro's site, however, has a little bit of magic under the hood that's worth sharing.
Seicon Limited is an engineering company in Central Ohio that specializes in vibration and shock control. Perhaps best known for its vibration-reducing ØVIB Washer Stand, Seicon also offers a similar product for HVAC installation. Buckeye Interactive has been maintaining the various Seicon sites (seiconlimited.com, 0vib.com, and hvacisolator.com) for years, but in 2014 Seicon made the decision to combine its sites into a single, cohesive experience and offer a single store for all of its products.
Advanced Custom Fields by developer Elliot Condon has changed the way we think about WordPress. No longer are we required to tediously program custom meta boxes nor deliver a list of custom field values for customers to use on their new WordPress sites. With premium add-ons like Repeater and Options Page, creating carousels, global site settings, and more is a snap.
I wrote about Elliot Condon’s Advanced Custom Fields plugin a while ago (see “Using Advanced Custom Fields for WordPress“), but I thought it might be helpful if I spent some time discussing how to overcome one of the most frustrating tasks related to the plugin: preserving custom field structures across WordPress environments.
The average WordPress developer may edit the custom fields in his or her development environment, write the code to display those fields, then manually re-edit the custom fields on production. Misspell a field name? Congratulations, you’re going to spend some time trying to figure out where you went wrong. The smart developer takes advantage of the Advanced Custom Fields export methods and doesn’t waste time doing the same thing over and over again.
If you regularly build WordPress sites and haven't tried Elliot Condon's Advanced Custom Fields plugin, I'd highly recommend checking it out as it will forever change the way you use WordPress.
With Advanced Custom Fields, you can easily define custom field templates for particular post types, page templates, or even individual posts/pages. With the help of some paid add-ons, you can quickly add support for repeaters (useful for carousels/sliders), a site options page (hello Google Analytics profile ID), or any of a dozen other official and third-party add-ons.
