I just installed ACF and created a new custom WYSIWYG field which works great (although the bug where you move a WYSIWYG field is annoying but I’ll deal with it), and I noticed that a bunch of new regaulr custom field names appeared even though I didn’t create them. I’m seeing:
- hide_on_screen
- layout
- position
- rule
- sidebar
Again, I didn’t have any custom fields at all until I installed ACF, and these five fields weren’t created by me. Where’d they come from, why are they there, and can I get rid of them somehow? Thanks.
Are you talking about the standard WP custom field area? This automatically shows the last 30 or so custom fields used anywhere on the site. ACF creates these custom fields and they are associated with the field group that you created. This is normal. You should not get rid of them because that will break the operation of your field groups.
Hi John. Yes, that’s what I’m referring to. Since I didn’t create those fields and I just installed ACF, I assumed it must’ve created them but couldn’t find anything that confirmed that. It’s a shame that side effect exists since the users of my WP installation will now see those fields but not know what they’re for, and come to me to find out.
There are a lot of plugins that add fields to that list. Many plugins use field names that start with an underscore which hides them from that list. I think this was suggested for ACF, but it would seriously effect backwards compatibility and would likely be a nightmare to include a way to update from the current names to new names if it were to change. I’m not the developer so I can’t say what’s involved.
If the custom field meta box is not something you want the client to see you can remove it. https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/remove_meta_box
