The release candidate for the next version of ACF is available. In addition to WordPress 6.5 support, it is also the release that will require an activated pro license to use pro features (regarding changes for plugins that include ACF Pro).

Advanced Custom Fields version 6.2.5 is now available. This release is a security fix release containing an important change you need to be aware of before you update. From ACF 6.2.5, use of the ACF Shortcode to output an ACF field will be escaped by the WordPress HTML escaping function wp_kses.

It has not been uncommon for a theme or plugin to stagnate after it is purchased by a hosting company. One exception is ACF. The ACF team has been doing an excellent job moving the plugin forward and also has communicated well with its user base. If you are interested in what the team has accomplished, here is the ACF 2023 year in review.

ACF vs Meta Box – In this video I do a simple comparison of ACF and Meta Box performance. It is difficult to compare them because they have different architectures, but we learn some things in the video and are able to draw some conclusions.

Interesting results from the ACF 2023 annual survey. I’d say it is wildly popular among developers.

Here is a good video from Paul Charlton on how to use ACF Flexible Content fields with Bricks.

ACF 6.2 has been released. It includes the option pages UI (pro only) and bidirectional relationship features (free and pro).

Coming in ACF 6.2 are two new features: built-in bidirectional relationship fields and built-in option pages. Up until now these features required a code snippet to enable, but with ACF 6.2 they can be setup with the user interface.  

In this video Paul C considers several solutions for custom fields that are ACF alternatives.