Frequently Asked Questions

Straight out of the box, WordPress comes with two post types: Posts and Pages. These allow you to write content in the administration area (sometimes called the back end), and have that content displayed on the public facing side of your website (the front end).

But what if you wanted to store and retrieve more information on each page (or post) than just the content?

To help out with this, WordPress provides the ability to associate ‘post meta’ data with your pages or posts. This means you can add information like a start date to an event post, or a price to a product post, and then display that information to your website’s users using built-in WordPress functionality.

WordPress calls these ‘custom fields’, and provides a very basic form on the post and page editing screen to create and update these values.

ACF helps you, as a developer, to take advantage of these custom fields. It gives your users a sleek user interface to manage their custom field information, and you a suite of powerful functions to retrieve and present it to your site’s visitors.

Practically, this means you can add custom data to not only Posts and Pages, but also Categories, Taxonomies, Custom Posts, Custom Taxonomies, Users, Attachments, Comments, Menus, Widgets and Options, all in just a few clicks, and without writing any code. There are currently over 30 different field types ranging from simple text fields through media and maps, to more complex groups of fields and relationships.

ACF also provides a series of PHP functions that developers can use to display the information stored in these fields in their front-end templates, and an ever-expanding suite of actions and filters that make customizing both the plugin, and the data it produces, a breeze.

ACF PRO is an extension of the latest version of our free plugin. It includes numerous premium features:

• Repeater field
• Gallery field
• Flexible Content field
• Clone field
• Options pages
• ACF Blocks

At the time of writing, it is estimated that 40% of the planet’s websites run on WordPress. And one of the keys to WordPress’s success is its flexibility and extensibility: it has evolved from a simple blogging platform to a sophisticated Content Management System capable of managing and displaying any sort of information.

ACF handles the nuts and bolts of adding the most common types of information to WordPress. If you’d like to add a PDF to your page for your users to download, the File Field will upload, store and retrieve that PDF for you. You’ll just need to add one line of code to your template.

Like WordPress itself, ACF is also under constant, active development. That means that as the framework evolves, you’ll be able to utilize the improvements introduced without major disruptions to your site and your development processes.

While ACF is designed to be as easy to use as possible, it is a tool created specifically for WordPress developers.

You will need an understanding of how PHP code works, and a decent grounding in the basic concepts of WordPress (such as ‘The Loop’) to get the most value out of the plugin.

We are fanatically committed to providing users of ACF great support.

We are constantly working to expand and improve the plugin’s documentation.

If you can’t find an answer there, the folks on our email help desk will do their very best to help you out.

There is also a very active community of users on our Community Forums who are both very knowledgeable and friendly!

You can find out more about support at our dedicated Support FAQ.

ACF comes in two versions: free and PRO. The free version is fully featured, and contains most of the types of fields you’re likely to need while building an average website.

If you’d really like to level up, and gain access to more complex features such as ACF Blocks and Options Pages, as well as feature rich field types such as Galleries, Repeaters, Flexible Content Layouts, and Clones, you’ll need to purchase the PRO version.

ACF PRO licenses are available for purchase as yearly subscriptions. Prices shown are in USD excluding any taxes which may be added during checkout depending on your billing location. For available pricing, please see our PRO page.

Yes. Licenses are renewed automatically each year to give you continued access to updates and PRO features. You may also opt-out from auto renewals in favor of manual control from your online account.

You can safely purchase ACF PRO with your credit card through Stripe’s secure payment gateway.

ACF is tax registered in the US and Canada. Your tax will be calculated at checkout.

If you require a ‘Tax residency certificate’ we have one available, please contact support.

Your purchase provides you access to your own store account page on our site. From here you can: – Download the latest version of ACF PRO (and access previous versions too). – View and upgrade your license keys. – View and manage your license activations. – View and print invoices for all your orders. – Manage your contact and billing details. – View and create support tickets.

Your ACF PRO download is always available at your store account page on our site.

ACF PRO has been built with WordPress best practices in mind. We have designed the plugin to be as efficient and unobtrusive as possible, to allow you to build great websites without getting in your way.

But, with over 50,000 plugins available in the WordPress directory, and probably at least as many themes available, some conflicts may arise. In the unusual circumstance that such an issue occurs, we will always do our utmost to try and resolve those conflicts through our friendly support folks.

We are fanatical about support, and want you to get the best out of your website with ACF. If you run into any difficulties, there are several places you can find help:

• Our extensive documentation contains references and guides for most situations you may encounter.
• We have an active and friendly community on our Community Forums who may be able to help you figure out the ‘how-tos’ of the ACF world.
• The support professionals on our Help Desk will assist with your more in-depth technical challenges
• The WordPress professionals at Codeable can provide coding support if you’re starting to feel out of your depth.

Find out more about our support here.

We really want you to be happy with your purchase, and we’ll try really hard to make that happen. But, if for any reason you’re not completely happy, we do offer a 30 day money back guarantee. Please get in touch.

There are currently two different types of accounts:

• Accounts – at www.advancedcustomfields.com/my-account/, and
• Support – at support.advancedcustomfields.com

You can create a support account at any time, but you need to have purchased ACF PRO to access the Accounts area.

There are currently two different logins in the world of ACF:

• Accounts – at www.advancedcustomfields.com/my-account/, and
• Support – at support.advancedcustomfields.com

If you are having trouble logging in, you may be using the credentials from one side to try and login to the other. Try checking this first.

If you’re still having trouble, try resetting your password.

If you’re running into difficulties trying to reset your password, please get in touch.

With your account you can:

• Download the latest version of ACF PRO (and all previous versions, if you wish)
• View and upgrade your licenses
• View and print invoices for all your previous orders
• Edit your contact and billing details
• View and add new support tickets

Transferring ownership of an ACF PRO license is as simple as updating the account details at your store account page. If you’ve lost your account information, or are having troubles making this happen, please let us know

Absolutely, although this is not possible through the website. Please get in touch.

Take a look at our doc that outlines the minimum requirements of WordPress and PHP, as well as our recommended versions to run ACF.

Users who are installing ACF for the first time on a site should follow these steps:

• Download the latest zip of the plugin
• Log in to your site
• Navigate to Plugins > Add new
• Upload the zip file
• Click ‘Activate Plugin’

ACF is successfully installed and activated if your Administration menu has an entry called ACF.

For a step by step guide to installation, click here.

ACF PRO is only available for download from the downloads section of your ACF store account.

ACF PRO can be installed via your WordPress site’s admin dashboard. Navigate to Plugins > Add New Plugin and click Upload Plugin. Select the ACF PRO zip file downloaded from your account. Once installed, click Activate.

It can also be installed via FTP. Unzip the file you have downloaded, and upload the folder called ‘advanced-custom-fields-pro’ to your wp-content/plugins directory. Once ACF PRO is uploaded, you will need to activate it by finding it in the list on the Plugins page in your site’s Administration area, and clicking on the Activate link.

ACF PRO can also be installed with Composer.

To enable your automatic updates and PRO features, you’ll need to enter your license key under “ACF” > “Updates”, and click ‘Activate’.

We can’t imagine why you’d want to, but you most certainly can uninstall ACF.

The first step will be to locate any ACF specific code in both your theme’s functions.php file or its template files. For your reference, you can find a list of ACF specific functions, filters, and actions in the documentation.

You’ll need to deactivate ACF by clicking on the Deactivate link on the Plugins page, followed by the Delete link.

This will remove all of the plugin’s files from the WordPress plugins directory.

Simply deactivating or uninstalling ACF will not affect any of the data you’ve created while using the plugin.

This means that the data will continue to be available throughout your site even if the plugin is no longer functioning.

Please note, however, if you are using ACF specific functions such as the_field() or get_field() to access this data in your plugin or template files, these functions will no longer exist, and your website will no longer function as expected.

Because your field data remains intact after deactivation, you should be able to reinstall ACF or ACF PRO and pick up where you left off.

Simply follow the steps outlined above.

If you run into any troubles, please get in touch with support.

With ACF or ACF PRO successfully installed, you should probably get started!

If you’re planning on using ACF to extend the capabilities of an existing website, please back up your database and theme files before beginning. That way, you can always return your site to its original state if things don’t go as expected.

If you’re using a pre-built theme, make sure you create a child theme, as you will almost certainly be modifying template files to display your custom field data on the front end of your site. Having a child theme means that your changes won’t be overwritten when your theme is next updated.

Now might also be a good time to make sure you’re familiar with concepts like ‘The Loop’, and the WordPress template hierarchy. You’ll need to understand how WordPress uses theme files to output HTML to get the most out of the plugin.

If you’ve installed and activated ACF successfully, a new menu item titled ACF will appear in the WP-Admin menu. This is your gateway into the wonderful world of ACF.

To create a new set of custom fields (or field group), choose ACF> Field Groups > Add New from this menu system. To edit an existing field group, choose ACF > Field Groups, and then select the group you want to edit from the list on that page.

The Tools page ( ACF > Tools ), provides a way to import or export some or all of the field groups you’ve already created. These plain text JSON exports are an easy way to move your favourite field groups from site to site, or to backup a field group before making changes. You can also generate PHP code here to construct your custom fields from within your theme’s code. Using this option can speed up your website by reducing the number of calls made to the database.

You can enter your ACF PRO license key on the Updates page ( ACF > Updates ). This will enable automatic updates and keep your plugin up to date with all the newest features.

In ACF world, a field group is a collection of custom fields that will be displayed together on a WP-Admin editing screen. Behind the scenes, a field group is a type of custom post, which means they can be found in the Posts table of your WordPress database. A field group is broken up into 3 main sections:

1. The collection of fields
2. The location settings
3. The general settings for the group

A custom field is the basic building block of ACF. Its main purpose is to streamline the process of adding and pulling extra information to and from built-in WordPress objects such as Posts, Taxonomies, and Users.

In a field group editing screen, you are able to specify settings for each individual field, such as labels and instructions, placeholder text and default values, whether or not a value is required, as well as attributes for the field such as CSS classes and an ID. You can also set up conditional logic for the field (which will control whether or not it is displayed) based on values entered into another field.

More complex field types can even include their own sub fields, and can provide the ability to create quite complex structures without needing to write large amounts of code.

ACF currently provides over 30 different field types ranging from simple text fields through media and maps, to more complex groups of fields and relationships. You can view the full list in our documentation.

There is no real limit to the number of fields you can create using the plugin. If you have room on your database server, you can keep on creating fields.

But as a general rule, and to help both your website and your site’s administration area to maintain decent performance, we wouldn’t recommend adding more than fifty fields to a field group. If you think you need more than that, it might be worth reconsidering how you’re structuring your data.

Just like in most programming and development, it’s good practice to make your field names both readable and descriptive. This will help you keep track of what each field is for when you’re using them in your templates later on.

For example, rather than naming a date field just ‘date’, perhaps you could name it ‘start_date’, which would allow for an ‘end_date’ at some point in the future.

Readable and descriptive field names will also help those coming after you by helping them understand what you were intending when you created those fields. Consider the example below:

<?php $p = get_field('price') * get_field('amount'); ?>

versus

<?php $total_price = get_field('price_per_gram') * get_field('weight_in_grams'); ?>

Obviously the second example will give you a lot more context when you or your workmates return to this code in 6 months to update it!

ACF uses ‘location rules’ to determine when and where to display the field froups you create. You can specify these rules in the “Location Rules” section of the field group editing page.

Location rules allow you to choose to show a field group based on whether or not a post is of a specific post type, uses a specific template, or belongs to a specific category. You can also show field groups for users, taxonomies, attachments, menus, and much more. You can even specify your own custom location rules.

See this guide for more information.

You will need to edit your theme’s PHP template files to show the information entered into your fields on your site’s front end.

ACF provides a suite of functions to assist with retrieving your fields’ values from the database and displaying them in a template.

The documentation for each field type generally has code examples showing how to edit your template file to make the data returned by that field type display properly on the front end. Below is a simple example of using the_field() to make a field in a basic template:

<?php

if ( have_posts() ) {
    while ( have_posts() ) {
        the_post(); 
        ?>

        <h2><?php the_field('name_of_text_field'); ?></h2>

        <?php
    } // end while
} // end if

?>

Each field has a group of settings that provide the ability to change labels, placeholder, default values, instructions, and more. There are also settings available that are specific to each field type, such as ‘options’ for a dropdown field.

If the provided settings are not configurable enough for you, you can also explore the filters that are available for different field types.

If you have more specific questions about how ACF works, please have a look through our extensive documentation.

If you would like to access our support system, please check out our Support FAQ. You can also access help through the support section of our website.

No, you will need an active subscription of ACF PRO to receive updates to the plugin.

Lifetime license holders will continue to receive updates.

ACF can be updated either via one-click update or manually. When an update becomes available, you will receive a notification on your Plugins page.

To apply the update via one-click update, simply click ‘update now’ in the notification on the Plugins page.

To update manually, you can download the new version of the plugin here. You can then safely delete the plugin directory on your server, and upload the new version via FTP.

For more details, please see our guide: How to update.

ACF PRO can also be updated via one-click update or manually. When an update becomes available, you will receive a notification on your Plugins page.

You need to activate a valid license in the plugin’s ‘Updates’ page to enable automatic updates. To apply the update via one-click update, simply click ‘update now’ in the notification on the Plugins page.

If you want to update manually, you’ll need to download the latest version from your store account.

For more details, please see our guide: How to update.

The upgrade from ACF 5 to ACF 6 will be seamless for the majority of users. There are a couple of areas of backwards compatibility that may need some extra work:

If you have customized the settings for a field type. If you have used ACF Blocks and rely on a unique block ID in your templates or you use parse_blocks() and require a block ID.

If you’ve upgraded from version 4 to version 5 of ACF and you can’t see your fields, first of all, don’t panic! Version 5 uses a different data structure so they might not be visible, but your fields and their values are still there.

You should see a database upgrade prompt at the top of the page on your WordPress dashboard. All you need to do is click the button to run the database upgrade process. Your fields should reappear once that process has been completed

If you’re still having difficulties, please get in touch.

For some reason, the database upgrade process may not have triggered as expected when the new version was installed. To make this happen again, please ensure version 5 is activated and follow this procedure:

1. Back up your database.
2. In your wp_options table, please set the acf_version value back to the latest version you had installed ( something like 4.4.11 ).
3. Reload the wp-admin dashboard.
4. Click the database upgrade button that appears.

If you’re still having troubles, please contact support.

In some hosting environments, communication may not be possible between your server and the WordPress update server. If this happens to you, please note any error messages you find, and contact support.

If you’d like to go back to an earlier version of ACF, we’d recommend using this rollback plugin, which is available from the WordPress repository.

Although we’re not associated with this plugin in any way, we have had reports of ACF users employing it successfully.

All the previous versions of ACF PRO are available for download from the downloads section of your ACF store account. To start rolling back, you’ll need to log in, download, and unzip the version you’d like to rollback to.

Then, on your website, you’ll need to deactivate and delete the version you’re currently running on the Plugins page.

Finally, you’ll need to upload the older version to your wp-content/plugins directory. Once the older version of ACF PRO is uploaded, you will need to activate again it by finding it in the list on the Plugins page in your site’s Administration area, and clicking on the Activate link.

License keys are used to activate the plugin via the ‘Updates’ ACF admin page. Activating the license key on a site enables automatic plugin updates and gives access to ACF PRO premium features.

Until a valid license key has been activated for the site, it won’t be possible to create new or edit existing PRO fields (Gallery, Repeater, Flexible Content, or Clone), or use the premium features such as Options Pages and ACF Blocks.

If you previously activated a license and the subscription has expired, you will not be able to create new PRO fields, but you will be able to edit existing PRO field definitions.

The editing and display of field data will be unaffected by the status of the licenses.

Learn more about license activations.

After purchasing an ACF PRO license, you will receive a unique license key and access to download plugin files via our members area.

After installing and activating the ACF PRO plugin, you may then activate your license key from the “ACF > Updates” admin screen to register that website for plugin updates.

Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade your license at any time. Simply log in to your account area and navigate to the Subscriptions page. Once viewing your subscription, please use the “Upgrade or Downgrade” button shown next to the Product title and follow the prompts to sign-up to a new tier and complete the checkout.

If this button does not appear, the problem may be due to a related API issue. To solve this limitation, please use the Change payment button to first enter a valid credit card via the Stripe payment gateway.

License upgrade costs are prorated. The calculated amount will take into account the current subscription length and the difference in price between tiers. For example, Jane subscribed to a Personal license ($49 USD yearly) and then decided to upgrade to the Freelancer tier ($149 USD yearly) after exactly 3 months. The initial “upgrade fee” will be calculated as ($149 - $49) / 12 * 9 = $75 USD with a then ongoing yearly subscription fee of $149 USD.

License downgrades are free, however, we encourage you to contact support and ask if a partial refund can be applied.

Yes. By default, your subscription will be set up to auto-renew 12 months after sign-up. To opt out, simply login to your account area and navigate to the Subscriptions page. Once viewing your subscription, please toggle the Auto renew switch to the off position.

With auto renewals disabled, your subscription will end at the end of the 12 month period and you will lose access to plugin updates and ACF PRO features in the plugin. However, it will still be possible to manually renew or enable auto updates again to continue receiving access to the latest plugin releases.

To activate your ACF PRO license, you need to paste your license key into the available space on the page at “ACF > Updates”. Then click the Activate License button.

You can find this key on your store account page.

For a more detailed guide, please see How to activate.

Each time an ACF PRO license key is activated, the following data is sent to the ACF website and saved to later validate activations and download updates:

• ACF license key
• ACF installed version
• WP site name
• WP site url
• WP installed version
• WP is multisite
• WP language
• WP timezone
• PHP version
• Count of ACF Blocks

No personal data such as usernames, emails, or IP addresses are recorded.

If you’d like to find out more about our approach to data and privacy, please read our Privacy Policy

The maximum number of “active” activations is limited by the license tier. Currently, we offer three tiers with increasing limits: – Personal: 1 website. – Freelancer: 10 websites. – Agency: Unlimited websites.

In addition, we allow unlimited activations for “development + staging” websites.

To better understand how we determine if a website is considered a production, staging or development environment, please consult the following ruleset:

• Dev: Is URL a single segment? (localhost)
• Dev: Is URL an IP address? (192.168.0.1)
• Dev: Does the URL contain a dev related segment? (dev.website.com, website.dev.cc)
  • Dev: Does the URL contain a dev-related subdomain? (test., testing., sandbox., dev., local.)
  • Dev: Does the URL contain a dev-related TLD? (.local, .loc, .localhost, .test)​​
  • Stage: Does the URL contain a stage-related subdomain? (stage., staging.)
  • Stage: Does the URL contain a stage-related parent? (sitename.wpengine.com, sitename.wpenginepowered.com, staging-sitename.kinsta.cloud, sitename.flywheelstaging.com)
  • Prod: All other URLs.

Remember you can upgrade or downgrade your license at any time, and our support team is always here to help answer your questions!

ACF PRO is used at a site level, not a network level, so you need to activate the plugin on every subsite where it’s required. Therefore, you need a license that can be activated on those subsites.

For example, if you have a multisite network and want to use ACF PRO on 8 of the subsites, you would need the Freelancer license, which has a 10 site activation limit. If you have a large multisite network and want to network activate the plugin so it can be used on all subsites, we recommend you purchase the Agency license which has unlimited site activations.

If you purchased a license before 1st Feb 2024, you do not need to activate the license key on individual subsites, just the main site of the network. The updates page will not be visible on any subsites.

We are fanatical about support, and want you to get the best out of your website with ACF. If you run into any difficulties, there are several places you can find help:

• Our extensive documentation contains references and guides for most situations you may encounter.
• We have an active and friendly community on our Community Forums who may be able to help you figure out the ‘how-tos’ of the ACF world.
• The support professionals on our Help Desk will assist with your more in-depth, technical challenges.
• The WordPress professionals at Codeable can provide coding support if you’re starting to feel out of your depth.

Support is provided for free to everyone, without any bias to customers or beginners. Because this support service is provided for free, please take this into consideration when creating a ticket and waiting for a reply.

Please research your issue and read the relevant documentation before asking a question. This will help free up our support team and allow for faster development on the plugin which we all love.

If you have a question about ACF, our collection of documentation articles should always be your first stop.

We are constantly updating and expanding the documentation, based on your feedback, to try and anticipate any questions or difficulties you may have.

The documentation contains detailed technical descriptions and code examples for: * Field types, * Functions, * Actions, and * Filters

The documentation also contains dozens of friendly guides and tutorials, covering topics from Getting Started to how to debug your code.

If you’ve been through the documentation, and you’re looking for advice on how to use ACF to accomplish a specific task, our Community Forums would be a great next stop.

The chances are that if you’re looking to do something with ACF, someone before you has probably faced a similar challenge, and their solution may already be in the forums.

If there isn’t already a thread containing an answer to your question, you can create a new one, and one of the friendly fellow developers who hang around the forum will probably be able to point you in the right direction.

You can also use the forums to throw around new ideas, discuss ACF related plugins, and earn some good karma by sharing your knowledge with the community.

If you run into a problem, and can’t find a solution in the documentation, or the Community Forums, please get in touch with our email help desk.

The friendly folks on the help desk will do their utmost to help you solve any problems that are ACF related, but please note, we may not always be able to help with issues that are caused by custom theme code, or conflicts and incompatibilities with other plugins.

We aim to answer your questions within 24 hours, with the exception of weekends and holidays.

If you’re looking for a developer to help you write some custom code that involves ACF, we’ve been pretty impressed with the folks from Codeable. They have a roster of vetted developers who have specific expertise in WordPress and ACF.

Plus, they’re giving ACF users a USD$60 voucher (worth an hour of coding) if you get in touch through us.