Getting Started

After you install Advanced Custom Fields, you can start creating new fields wherever they are supported.

Joomla 3.7+ by default supports custom fields for Joomla Articles and for Users. Let's see what you can do for each of those.

Advanced Custom Fields for Joomla Articles

First of all you need to navigate to Content > Fields in order to start creating new fields. As you can see in the screenshot below, to create your new Field click the "New" button.

Right after that, for a quickstart, you can just write the name of your new custom field and select the type of it as shown in the screenshot below.

All the fields available through Advanced Custom Fields are prefixed with the acronym ACF in front of their names so you can distinguish them from all the others.

Special Characteristics

All custom fields have certain characteristics which are available to you once you select the Type. For example, if you select "ACF - Country" then you will be able to choose what value you would like to be returned, in our example it's either the Country's name or the Country's Code.

Display Conditions

Another unique feature of Advanced Custom Fields Pro is that you can choose where each field is displayed on your site's frontend. You set this per field, in the Display Conditions tab of the field editing page. If you don't see the tab, go to Extensions → Plugins, open System - Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and make sure Display Conditions is enabled on the Settings tab.

1. Log into your Joomla backend.
2. Navigate to Content → Fields.
3. Click the field you want to edit.
4. Open the Display Conditions tab.
5. Click Select Condition and choose a condition, such as Menu, Device Type, Date, User Group or Country.
6. Set Match to Is or Is not, and choose the values you want.
7. To add more conditions, click Add Condition.
8. Click Save.

If you add more than one condition, the Display when option at the top decides how they're checked. Choose all if you want every condition to be met. Choose any if one or more conditions being met is enough.

You can also click New Condition Set to add a separate group of conditions. The field is displayed when at least one condition set is met, and each set has its own all / any option.

Let's say that you want a field to be displayed on the home page only, and not on mobiles and tablets. Set Display when to all, add a Menu condition with Home selected, and add a Device Type condition set to Is not Mobile and Tablet. As you can see in the screenshot above, that's all it takes.

For another example, see how to hide a custom field from the category view.

Where to fill them

Once you create your custom fields you can go ahead and use them in any of your Joomla Articles.

As you can see from the screenshot above, all the custom fields which haven't been assigned to a Field Group can be found by default on a Tab field called "Fields" in the Article Edit screen.

Advanced Custom Fields for Joomla Users

The creation and the use of Custom Fields for Joomla Users is exactly the same as the one for Joomla Articles with only a few differences.

Differences with Joomla Articles

• To create fields you navigate to Users → Fields.
• Display Conditions work for Joomla Users too. For them to apply on the User Profile page, the System - Fields plugin must be ordered before the System - Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin in Extensions → Plugins. If it isn't, you'll see a warning in the field's Display Conditions tab.
• You can't create fields with the same name as the ones in Joomla Articles. This is also true if you have first created a custom field for Joomla Users and then tried to do the same thing for Joomla Articles.

Note

Advanced Custom Fields can be used by all of the extension which take advantage of Custom Fields in general. Each extension may use them in various different ways but their core functionality stays the same.