WordPress Tip: Adding Custom Fields in Posts

by Tom Johnson on Sep 11, 2010
categories: technical-writing

You can add custom fields below posts, and then pull out the values of those custom fields and insert them into a template. This reduces the sophistication behind styling post data, and automates the display in a template. This technique relies on the Custom Fields Template plugin.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3VXnryN9iY Here are the main steps:

1. Install the Custom Field Template.

2. Navigate to Appearance > Editor and include this code snippet in your functions.php file:

function getCustomField($theField) {
global $post;
$block = get_post_meta($post->ID, $theField);
if($block){
foreach(($block) as $blocks) {
echo $blocks;
}
}
}

3. Configure the custom fields by going to Settings > Custom Field Template, expand the template content section, and add something like this:

[Day Number]
type = text
size = 10
output = true

Note: Unless you add output = true, the custom fields won't work.

4. Go to Appearance > Editor and add this code into the template (such as single.php) where you want the value of the custom field to appear:

<?php getCustomField('Total Miles to Date'); ?>

5. To add a conditional statement around the getCustomField function (so that it only appears under certain conditions, such as the post being in a specific category), include this before the getCustomField function:

<?php if (in_category('3')){ ?>

... then insert your getCustomField functions ...

and then close with this:

<!--?php } else { ?-->   <!--?php } ?-->

Here's more information about conditional tags in WordPress.