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Closed 4 years ago.

Currently I have a custom coded plugin with helper functions to easily create new metadata fields for posts and taxonomies programatically. Recently I've been extending these to include settings fields (for options pages) and users. While this is something I'm capable doing as a developer it can often be tedious and time consuming. Plugins such as ACF already do everything I'd duplicate programmatically and more.

In my first job I was trained to do this and taught that the purpose was to prevent the database bloat that these plugins can cause. Additionally, it was argued that the ease of use and minimal time involvement for these plugins was outweighed by the fact that these tasks are within reason to achieve pragmatically for competent developers.

While I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer to this question, per se, as there are certainly benefits to both approaches I'm wondering if it actually matters in the end. Any input and well reasoned thoughts would be appreciated.

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.

Closed 4 years ago.

Currently I have a custom coded plugin with helper functions to easily create new metadata fields for posts and taxonomies programatically. Recently I've been extending these to include settings fields (for options pages) and users. While this is something I'm capable doing as a developer it can often be tedious and time consuming. Plugins such as ACF already do everything I'd duplicate programmatically and more.

In my first job I was trained to do this and taught that the purpose was to prevent the database bloat that these plugins can cause. Additionally, it was argued that the ease of use and minimal time involvement for these plugins was outweighed by the fact that these tasks are within reason to achieve pragmatically for competent developers.

While I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer to this question, per se, as there are certainly benefits to both approaches I'm wondering if it actually matters in the end. Any input and well reasoned thoughts would be appreciated.

• custom-field
• metabox

1 Answer 1

There is a right answer, write your own metabox code. Over the long run the amount of time you will need to "fight" the APIs of the plugins, to work around its bugs, and to maintain the plugin itself (upgrades and such) will cost you more than writting the code yourself.

If your site supposed to live only a short time maybe it is worth to use the plugins to get it going faster, but people usually underestimate how long a site will be alive once it gets going.