Digging to Meta Box – One of the Most Powerful WordPress Custom Fields Plugins

Have you ever dealt with custom fields and meta boxes? They are important and useful features of WordPress that empower users with strong customizability. To adapt the need for using and creating WordPress custom fields, many WordPress developers have tried to create and innovate plugins to work with them. Meta Box is one of those. It is a highly reputable custom fields plugin and framework developed for more than 10 years. Let’s dig into Meta Box to know if it really deserves this fame.

Up to now, this custom field plugin is among the most popular plugins of its kind. It now has a total 500,000+ installation, over 100+ 5-star rating, and can go further in the future. 

In brief, Meta Box plugin makes quick work of customizing a WordPress website with meta boxes and custom fields.  

In the next parts, we will learn:

• When and why to use Meta Box plugin.
• The advantages of using Meta Box plugin
• How to install and use it

Here we go!

Meta Box Application

Because Meta Box plugin helps you to include meta boxes and custom fields for your site, it’s especially helpful for an eCommerce site like:

• Create a customizable landing page, product page.
• Adding extra information for products like technical specifications, color ranges, …

Moreover, you can create a vast of websites and pages with Meta Box in different niches like:

• Create a booking website for hotel, flight, travel, tour, OTA, … ;
• Create an FAQs page;
• Register and manage user profiles on the front end easily; 
• Create a classified advertisements website;
• Create a website for selling something online;
• etc.

They update the case studies every week so you can explore more specific applications of it.

Advantages of Meta Box Plugin and 101 Reasons Why You Should Use It.

Intuitive Ui Makes Everything Easier For Even Beginners

Meta Box doesn’t force you to use complicated code to create custom fields at all. You have two choices: use a free Online Generator tool or buy the premium Meta Box Builder extension with the UI right on the backend. 

Why is UI so matter? Because it allows you to generate code, create fields with drag-and-drop or just-clicking manipulations without coding. It means simplicity, so everyone, even non-coders can master it quickly. Generally, any things you wish to work with can be done through intuitive UI. That’s suitable for everyone, even beginners, and helps you save your time from sleepless nights coding.

Both tools are quite similar to each other in terms of using. However, the premium extension worths every penny and helps you save time more. Meta Box Builder provides more advanced features and can combine with other Meta Box’s extensions more easily, making you “the master of custom fields”.

The friendly UI 

Support Various Kinds of Data

Secondly, Meta Box has over 40 different field types, corresponding to 40+ data types. Such an amazing number! That number means this plugin supports nearly all the data types that users may want (posts, attachments, terms, media, radio, HTML, etc.). Therefore, whatever you wish to input, you can find it in Meta Box plugin and get satisfied. That makes Meta Box one of the top-notch plugins in this field.

Include Strong and Powerful Features

Unlike other plugins, each feature of Meta Box is included in separated extensions. And Meta Box has up to 27 strong and powerful extensions (both free and premium) covering almost the needs of a developer when dealing with custom fields, custom post types, or custom taxonomies. 

Moreover, when deeply diving into each extension, you will find many superb features:

• Group custom field, repeatable and collapsible fields: available in Meta Box Group. This extension helps you organize custom fields so that the fields’ structure looks much clearer and more organized. 

Meta Box Group

• Conditional logic: find it in Meta Box Conditional Logic. So, you are able to organize and control the relationship and connection between fields to increase the efficiency of them.
• Display the field’s value on front-end: MB Views helps you do it on the frontend without touching theme files. You can even customize all templates that don’t have custom fields in WordPress with this extension. 
• Display custom fields better in tabs: find it in Meta Box Tabs.

 Meta Box Tabs’ Demo

• Add custom fields to taxonomy terms: find it in MB Term Meta.
• Show custom fields on the front end: find it in MB Frontend Submission. This extension allows users to input data on the front end.
• Show/hide meta boxes in designated pages by conditions: available in Meta Box Include Exclude (using PHP) or Meta Box Show Hide (using JS).

Meta Box Show Hide’s demo

• Create and edit fields and forms for a user page and user profile on the front end: using MB User Profile.

Lightweight and Flexible

The most outstanding thing I found when trying Meta Box is that I can get each extension individually. In this way, I just need to get what I need instead of having every extension, even the unused ones. That not only saves my money but also releases the burden for my website and prevents it from running slowly.

Simple installation and easy to use

Even if you’re tech-savvy or not, Meta Box doesn’t challenge you to use it at all. 

Install Plugin

When you use only free Meta Box core plugin on WordPress, you just need to install it as any other free plugin. 

When you own Meta Box extension, installing the extensions that you need normally together with the core plugin. In case you have many extensions and find it difficult to control all, you should use Meta Box AIO. 

 Meta Box AIO allows you to manage all Meta Box extensions

Create Fields

If you don’t want to spend money on UI, you can use PHP to create meta boxes yourself or use the free Online Generator to simply and quickly generate code. Then, insert the code into your theme’s functions.php file.

As for premium packages, you have Meta Box Builder to create custom fields with UI in backend already.

You see, whatever style you want, Meta Box can meet your requirements.

Display Fields’ Values on Frontend

Without help of MB Views, you need the function rwmb_meta to display field’s values on the frontend.

$value = rwmb_meta( ‘name’ );

echo $value;

Otherwise, MB Views will help you avoid touching theme files.

For more detailed instructions, they have awesome documentation here. You should read it carefully before doing anything or contact them for help.

Final Thoughts

Above are what you’re expecting from a strong, intensive custom field plugin. All in all, Meta Box is user-friendly even for non-coders, helps you save time and money from, maximizes your business, and accelerates the process of creating custom fields. 

However, experiences are worthier than words, so I can’t claim anything for sure until you try it.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn more about WordPress custom fields. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step guide to creating a Grocery delivery app in few steps.