How to Use Custom Fields in Your Thesis Theme

There are so many uses for custom fields in WordPress. You can read more about Custom fields just by doing a Google search, but just one of many examples, here’s what I recently had to use a custom field for. I had a client who wanted to add a PayPal buy now button to a specific place in certain posts. I wanted to make it easy to add the code without having to figure out where to place it in the post. So I created a custom field and the PayPal code is just pasted into the value field. Then I created the code in the custom functions to show the contents of the custom field. Again, this is just one example, but here’s how to get custom fields to work in Thesis:

Step 1: Add the Custom Field to a Post or Page

If you’re adding this for the first time, click the “Enter New” link. Decide on what you are going to name the custom field and type that into the “Name” field of the custom fields section. Then in the “Value” field, just type or paste in the value you want to assign to this custom field.

Now save your changes and update and/or publish your post.

Step 2: Get the Custom Field

Just adding it here doesn’t actually show the custom field meta data anywhere. You need to now call that field and display the contents where you want in your site. Now, either use the Thesis Openhook plugin, or add a custom function to your custom-functions.php file, but this is the basic function:

<?php global $post; 
	if (get_post_meta($post->ID, 'your_custom_field_name', true)) { 
		echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'your_custom_field_name', true); 
	}
?>

That’s it!

As a practical example, to create a custom function to add an image after your post using the URL specified in the custom field add this to the custom-functions.php file:

function my_custom_field_function() {
global $post;
   if (get_post_meta($post->ID, 'your_custom_field_name', true)) { ?>
      <img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'your_custom_field_name', true); ?>" alt="your description" /></a>
<?php   }
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'my_custom_field_function');

Enter your custom field names where shown, and give your function a meaningful name.

• Custom fields hacks for WordPress
• WordPress Codex
• Advanced uses for custom fields in WordPress

Tagged as: Custom Fields, thesis tips