Meaning
Custom Fields (also called Post Meta or Meta Data) enable storing structured data associated with content, extending beyond title, content, and excerpt.
Definition
Custom Fields are key-value pairs attached to posts, pages, or custom post types, storing any additional information needed: prices, locations, ratings, event dates, product specifications, or custom URLs. This data is stored in the wp_postmeta database table and can be displayed on the frontend through template code.
WordPress includes a basic Custom Fields interface in the post editor, but most developers use the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin for user-friendly field creation. ACF provides 30+ field types: text, textarea, number, email, URL, image, gallery, relationship, repeater, and flexible content fields.
Custom Fields enable structured content management; a movie review site can have fields for Director, Release Year, Rating, Genre, without embedding this data in the main content. This separation allows consistent data presentation and powerful query filtering.
Example
A recipe blog uses Custom Fields with ACF to add structured data to each recipe post: Cooking Time (number field), Difficulty Level (select field), Ingredients (repeater field), and Nutritional Info (group field). The theme template automatically displays this information in a formatted recipe card, enables filtering recipes by cooking time, and outputs schema markup for rich search results.
