WordPress has always been one of the top platforms for bloggers, due to its simplicity and extendability, however the last 2 years have shown us that blogging is just the tip of the iceberg and jumping down the WordPress rabbit hole can lead to some outstanding websites.
The ability to add hierarchical pages as well as a very user friendly menu manager turned the development focus from a purely blogging platform into something much more flexible.
However a good CMS needs more. A good CMS absolutely must enable the user to create various content bits that can be used in various areas around the website, custom fields have been in WordPress for a very long time now, but they were never user friendly. They were never easy to use for casual bloggers or the people who only update their websites once a month.
Developing custom interfaces to wrap these custom fields was a long and tedious task, so in the interest of saving costs companies would usually resort to using half baked plugins, which tried to do just that. The choice was pretty limited and the plugins never quite did everything you need. There was always a but. Until now.
ByTheScruff recently started deploying a plugin that we have had our eyes on for quite a while now and it has yet to give us one good reason not to use it in production. The plugin is “Advanced Custom Fields“, it provides a beautifully designed interface that makes creating really simple and good looking custom field panels an absolute breeze. There is support for every imaginable field type and it even allows the creation of data streams via its “Repeater” field functionality.
Below are 2 screenshots for a text quote carousel that we are using on one of the sites that we have built using Advanced Custom Fields, the image on the left is how we create the actual field set and the one on the right is how our clients will edit and update them, it doesn’t get easier than this:
So if you are interested in setting up or overhauling a website for your business, a well-developed WordPress site might be just what you need. Give us a shout on 0207 033 4269 or drop us a line on [email protected] and we’ll be glad to help you.
