Clean WP menu & remove old ACF slugs?

• wplondon

• January 28, 2022 at 5:41 am

Hi,

I have taken over a web site which extensively used Advanced Custom Fields Pro along with a bespoke theme. I am now using a new theme which doesn’t require ACF. I have a very basic understanding of ACF.

There’s two issue which are causing problem which hopefully someone can advise me on. 🙂

1. The WordPress Admin menu has about a dozen links (and sub-links) to custom fields which (I guess) were created in ACF. None of these apply any longer and I can seem to be able to remove them – how can I remove these from the WP menu?

2. The previous developer created about 100 custom fields which use the same slug as those required by the new theme (“portfolio”, “case-studies”, “events”, etc) which is causing conflicts in multiple sections of the site. How do I remove the old ACF slugs, so that the new theme slugs work? I would prefer not to change the theme slugs, as the ACFs slug were good for SEO and I would also have to set-up 1000s of 301 redirects.

Can anyone give me advice?

Thanks.

Sally

• John Huebner

• January 28, 2022 at 9:23 am

Unfortunately I’m not going to be of much help. If you’ve changed themes and you are still seeing ACF fields (do you mean options pages), then whatever is being done could be done in a plugin.

You will also need to trash/delete the field groups that have been created. These are stored in the DB and will be there even after changing themes.

I can’t give much more advice on what would need to be done, it’s going to be specific to whatever the other dev did in the first place.

• wplondon

• January 28, 2022 at 10:09 am

Thanks, John.

“If you’ve changed themes and you are still seeing ACF fields (do you mean options pages), then whatever is being done could be done in a plugin.”

No, these are ACF taxonomy links (and “empty” custom post types fly-outs) in the main WP Admin menu (down the left column of WP Admin) which have nothing to do with the new site theme or plugins. I can see from the “live” site (using ACF) what these all relate to, but there aren’t needed in the new theme site.

I understand from reading the forum that it can be very problematic removing un used ACF fields. I’d be very wary about removing anything directing in the DB. :-0 🙂