When we got a call to examination Meta Box, we was utterly happy since a plugin author, Tran Ngoc Tuan Anh, is Vietnamese. If we check out my byline, you’ll notice that we also occur to live in Hanoi. The instance of a map margin indeed includes my apartment. But we digress…
Today, I’m reviewing Meta Box. Meta Box is one of a many renouned plugins for adding tradition fields and metadata. Don’t trust me about a popularity? It’s actively commissioned on over 100,000 websites according to a WordPress plugin repository. That’s a lotta websites.
Meta Box is especially used by developers and agencies looking to extend a functionality of their themes, though anyone can exercise it and benefit. Launched in 2010, it’s indeed a initial tradition fields plugin for developers.
I’m going to be holding a demeanour during a plugin from a viewpoint of a non-developer – we have some tiny formula chops, though I’m nowhere tighten to an expert. That competence tone a examination a small bit. If you’re not a developer, we wish to uncover we some cold things Meta Box can assistance we do.
If we are a developer, you’re substantially some-more associating about tradition fields than we am. Still, hopefully we can yield we with useful information about all a facilities and extensions accessible for Meta Box and you’ll come divided with some new knowledge.
Let’s puncture in…
First – What a heck are tradition fields?
Custom fields concede we to store additional information with any WordPress post. Ok – maybe that doesn’t sound exciting, though they indeed clear a lot of overwhelming features. For instance, we could use tradition fields to automatically supplement schema markup to your WordPress posts.
Many of your favorite plugins and themes are substantially built, during slightest partially, on a energy of tradition fields. They usually censor a tradition fields behind sharp interfaces. Rest assured, if tradition fields went away, your WordPress life would be a lot some-more difficult.
Installing Meta Box
After we exercise a plugin, we won’t see anything right away. You have to burst into your theme’s formula to get started. You need to supplement some formula to your functions.php (Appearance → Editor → functions.php). Meta Box provides some representation formula to get started:
Once we supplement that code, you’ll see this when we supplement a new post:
These are tradition fields combined by Meta Box.
Meta Box also provides some formula that will give we a deeper demo. If we supplement all that formula to your functions.php, we can see a full demo of what we can do with Meta Box:
Meta Box Extensions
Meta Box courteously supposing all their reward extensions for me to play around with. That’s 13 reward extensions, so we confess we didn’t exam any singular one. we picked my favorites to play around with and also checked out some of a giveaway extensions.
Meta Box Builder
Meta Box Builder is my favorite reward prolongation because, distinct a other extensions, it allows we to supplement tradition fields though meaningful any PHP. That means even I, a sum non-developer, can puncture in and build some stuff. When we exercise it, you’ll see an interface like this:
As we can see, I’m formulating a tradition calm margin for guest authors. This way, instead of formulating a new comment for any guest author, we could usually supplement their info around tradition fields. Once we save a tradition meta box, we see this on a post page:
So easy, that even we could figure it out.
Here’s what we built after a small some-more tinkering:
There’re ~43 tradition fields we can simply supplement with Builder. You can also select either your new meta boxes should uncover adult for posts, pages, or both.
So, if you’re a non-developer looking to start adding tradition fields to your site, we should substantially get this extension. Otherwise, you’ll need to learn some PHP.
Meta Box Geolocation
Meta Box Geolocation creates it approach easier to supplement residence information to a post. Instead of carrying to enter any component of an residence (which over a lot of posts would really supplement up), we can usually start typing and a plugin will query Google Maps and auto-fill all a fields. Just determine all is scold and you’re done.
Watch it in action:
Meta Box Geolocation creates all elementary – no need to emanate a database or set adult a Google Maps API yourself.
Meta Box Yoast SEO
Meta Box Yoast SEO is a giveaway prolongation that allows we to get a some-more accurate calm research measure from Yoast. It does this by permitting Yoast to see calm in tradition fields.
By default, Yoast will usually investigate a categorical calm in your post. Therefore, if we use a lot of tradition fields, you’ll have an false score. The Meta Box Yoast SEO prolongation fixes this.
Meta Box Conditional Logic
Meta Box Conditional Logic is a reward prolongation that lets we facilitate fields by simply requesting redeeming logic. See it in action:
For example, we could uncover opposite fields for earthy vs digital products. Or any other use for redeeming proof that we can consider up.
Meta Box Settings Page
If you’re a thesis or plugin developer, we suppose this reward prolongation is built wholly for you. Meta Box Settings Page helps we emanate a minute settings page regulating a Meta Box syntax. If we know correctly, a prolongation should drastically cut down a time it takes we to emanate a user-friendly interface.
For example, here’s a representation settings page for a theme:
It’s user-friendly with good aesthetics.
Other Premium Extensions
The above were my personal favorites, though they aren’t a usually extensions we can get for Meta Box. Here are a rest:
- Meta Box REST API (free) – put all tradition fields’ values into REST API responses
- Meta Box Admin Columns (premium) – supplement tradition fields to admin screens
- Meta Box Term Meta (premium) – supplement metadata to categories, tags, or other taxonomy
- Meta Box Custom Post Type (free) – simply emanate and conduct tradition post types
- Meta Box Text Limiter (free) – Limit a series of characters or difference that can be entered in a field.
- Meta Box Group (premium) – Organize things improved with repeatable groups of tradition fields
- Meta Box Template (premium) – Use templates to some-more simply conclude tradition meta boxes and fields
- Meta Box Tooltip (premium) – supplement assistance information to tradition fields with flattering tooltips. we suppose this is good for assisting developers make their themes/plugins some-more user-friendly
- Meta Box Show/Hide (JavaScript) (premium) – toggle meta boxes on or off for opposite templates, formats or taxonomies regulating JavaScript
- Meta Box Tabs (premium) – creates it easier to emanate tabs for meta boxes
- Meta Box Columns (premium) – creates it easier to aesthetically arrangement fields by putting them into a 12-column grid
- Meta Box Include/Exclude (premium) – lets we show/hide meta boxes by ID, template, taxonomy, or tradition function
Meta Box Pricing and Documentation
The simple meta box plugin is 100% free.
All a reward extensions operation in cost from $19 to $29 for use on total websites and one year of updates/support.
As for support – Meta Box is intensely good documented. The core plugin has tons of articles, and any prolongation is also entirely documented. If you’re already informed with PHP, we should be means to get adult and using really fast with a support docs Meta Box provides.
Final Thoughts
I know how critical tradition fields are to themes/plugins, and Meta Box allows we to exercise them impossibly easily. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not a dev, so we apologize if we wasn’t means to give a deepest insights into a plugin. But, a Meta Box Builder prolongation does make it easy, even for non-devs, and a rest of a docs gave me some good discernment into how a extensions work.
If you’re a dev, a giveaway core plugin, along with a extensions, should make your life a heckuva lot easier, so check it out!
No comments:
Post a Comment