{"id":135375,"date":"2022-09-21T09:55:46","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T14:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/?p=135375"},"modified":"2025-05-14T13:31:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T18:31:17","slug":"advanced-custom-fields-6-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/case-studies\/advanced-custom-fields-6-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Advanced Custom Fields 6.0 Makes It Even Easier to Build for Modern WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I remember the exact project I first used Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) on. It was about seven years ago and it was a publishing site with a couple of custom post types and a fairly funky design for the home page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good friend of mine, a few years my senior in WordPress, pointed me to Advanced Custom Fields<\/a> (ACF). It was exactly what I was looking for<\/a> and I never looked back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACF has been this kind of catalyst for many in the WordPress ecosystem. My conversations with team members about the plugin these days typically start with\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cNearly every WordPress developer you\u2019ve ever talked to, or will ever talk to, has used ACF!\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s less than a handful of plugins that have achieved this kind of omnipresence, and we\u2019ve gotta give kudos to the plugin\u2019s team (hat-tip to Elliot Condon and the Delicious Brains crew) for introducing new features in recent years that meet emerging developer trends! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s 6.0 release<\/a>, again, reflects a continuation of that commitment, and demonstrates why this plugin deserves the respect it has. The original ACF Blocks release ~3 years ago was the gateway for tens of thousands of developers to shift towards building with the Block Editor. With the evolution of the Block Editor in the years since, and with the arrival of Full Site Editing<\/a>, the 6.0 release empowers developers even further for building with modern WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s look at a few of these newer features and improvements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. A refreshed and refined UI<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

ACF has always been a get-the-job done tool. It\u2019s been simple in its design and has always provided a WordPress-native feel. This has been perfect and it\u2019s contributed well to ACF\u2019s adoption by the more than 2 million sites that have active ACF installs. With these 2 million+ sites comes a trove of user feedback, which the ACF team tapped into to identify and execute on a number of interface improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, with this latest release, ACF brings a refined and improved UI to the Field Group editing screen<\/a>. These changes intentionally work to meet the following UX objectives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reduce the vertical height of the field settings<\/strong> – The ACF team has reorganized the field settings into tabs that reduce the height of a single field on the screen and improves user navigation around this area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Make primary actions always visible<\/strong> <\/strong>– The Add New Field<\/em> and Save Changes<\/em> buttons are now sticky to the top of the table, meaning even in long lists of fields, you now have easy access to these primary actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Easier field reordering and collapsing<\/strong> – With some simple tweaks, the experience of reordering and collapsing fields and their settings is now even easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Check out the release post here<\/a> for a deeper dive into these UI changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Repeater Pagination (ACF Pro feature)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Repeater Field is the absolute MVP of ACF features, but anyone who has worked with it long enough knows it can become unwieldy at scale. With the launch of ACF 6.0 you now have access to an opt-in feature that allows Repeater Fields to be paginated. This means, in the right scenarios, content creators have a more-refined user experience and a reduced risk of hitting upper memory limits when sending updated subfield data back to the server. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
New opt-in pagination field setting for repeater field<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
How the pagination appears to the content creator<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Accessibility<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest accessibility hurdles with ACF has been the fact that you could not access a field and its settings using only a keyboard. This changes in 6.0 with full support for keyboard-only navigation throughout the custom field experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Round of applause for ACF putting effort into making the admin of their plugin work for keyboard only users! 👏👏 I ♥️ when plugin devs focus on accessibility, and including backend accessibility is just as important as frontend accessibility.https:\/\/t.co\/6gH9K6sdMO<\/a><\/p>— Amber Hinds (@heyamberhinds) August 29, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote>