This tutorial will be explain the basic use of Magic Fields, how create write panels, how create custom fields and how print in the template.
Installing Magic Fields.
Magic Fields is installed as any wordpress plugin, you just need download from his download page, put the folder in:
wp-content/plugins
And in the admin area in the plugins section do click in the “activate” link and its all.
When you active the plugin the first thing to Magic Field ask is for create two folders, this folders are:
/wp-content/files-mf /
and
/wp-content/plugins/Magic-Fields/thirdparty/phpthumb/cache
Is enough to you create these folders and give them enough permissions for be writable by Magic Fields
Now we are on road for start to use Magic Fields!
Basic Usage
The best way to understand how Magic Fields Works is with a example, in this example i want create a portfolio of my work. So, the first thing to do is a create a category called “portfolio” and after that create our write panel and assigned the category “portfolio”
Add a new write panel
In the write panel page exists many options, this options will be explained more a detail in the future for now i just leave the options by default.
After to create the write panel I’m going to add custom fields for this write panel, for now I will create just one custom field for add the services to I gave to the client.
In this page I can choice what type of custom field I want in this case I want a textbox field, and I give the name of “services” and the Label of Services.
I don’t want to this field be required and I don’t want to this field can be duplicated. (the duplicate featured will be explain in detail in the next’s posts)
And it’s all now we can enter to the portfolio panel and now we can start to create content.
We can view our post created with our write panel in the “Manage” option.
Displaying our information in the template.
Well now we need display the information to be added in our template, for that Magic Fields give us a little api for this. Lets go.
In our single.php file we can add this:
And it’s all.
Now if we visit the post we will see the information to we put in the services field.
Exists many more things to we can do with Magic Fields, in the next’s posts I will talk about the differents types of fields.
UPDATE: For more information about Magic fields visit the wiki
Ignore previous post, issue was to do with cache more than anything… feel free to delete comments
Good Stuff
Hi, first of thanks for the great plugin.
I installed the plugin and followed the steps as explained. in admin part everything is perfect. But its not displaying the fields/values in the theme page(single.php) I added the “echo get(‘my_write_panel_name’);” after the content part. but no luck! any lights on that??
Note: I have created 35 fields inside the custom-write-panel(‘my_write_panel_name’) will it be the problem?
Thanks in Adv.
Hi there. I can’t get this to work. I just need to have a box that I can place anywhere on the main posts page that my client can edit from the WP dashboard. I’ve followed the instructions and despite the fact that I’m placing the echo code in the sidebar, it overrides the actual posts and appears in the main post section. Can you help?
Many thanks …
Is there anyway to make one of the field types the exact same content box that you normally type into? Such as having bold, italic, upload photo, etc.?
Hi ammenullah, in get is name of field (http://wiki.magicfields.org/doku.php?id=front-end_functions and )
Hi Tim uses the parameter $post_id in functions http://wiki.magicfields.org/doku.php?id=front-end_functions
Hi Keith you can use multiline textbox field
Hello, I don’t know where I could post this, but I’m having one problem that I don’t really know if it’s a problem or not, I created a couple magic fields related to some of my categories to slit my post section in some like photos and videos has special place to post the information, and normal posts goes into post area, everything working fine… and no problem about this, my version is 1.4.1 (beta I think) but my main problem is when I post in one of these categories using the magic field new post area only to post on that category, when I post over there I can’t see the same post on edit posts, on the normal posts session like it was on 1.4…
What changed?? do you guys know how to fix this?
Thanks.
We’re about to start testing this plugin for a large project and I have some questions:
- I noticed that you can assign a default category in the write panel but how would we assign a specific post tag?
Also,
- We’re using custom post types with custom category and a selection of custom taxonomies. So how would we assign this to the custom write panel?
Hi garrison
1.- try with special js http://wiki.magicfields.org/doku.php?id=es:cargar_js_en_los_write_panels
2.- for the moment no. We are working on this
Hello,
I have added a new pane “Quotes”. However, when I click the pane I don’t get an overview of the quotes, but the “Posts” pane is opened in the “add new” mode. Why is this? Is it possible to change this to the normal workflow in WordPress?
I used to use the “more fields” plugin, but your plugin has better functionality regarding fieldtypes.
Hi
I’m a MagicField user since several month, and… My question looks like Garrison’s second one.
But different : is it possible to assign custom taxonomies on panels, programmatically in the functions.php file ?
I tried to use register_taxonomy but it doesn’t works…
(excuse me for my bad english
)
Hi Cédric check this for custom taxonomy http://groups.google.com/group/magic-fields/browse_thread/thread/7476338cbbe5d584/c80c75d66415380f?lnk=gst&q=taxonomy#c80c75d66415380f
Thanks for your reply. Now Its working fine. but i noticed one problem. When i activate the plugin, it shows “Posts” but it removes the sub menus [Add New, Categories, Post Tags] from the menu option. Below that it shows magic field name. When the plugin is Deactivated, it works normal again (i.e. it shows sub menus [Add New, Categories, Post Tags] inside the Post menu ) is it so? or its an error? Please let me know.
Hi,
I am new to magic fields and am having problems, it’s only showing the most recent post on my fishing site for the “recent catches” page, but I need it to show all of the posts. Am I missing something simple here? The blog is set to show the last ten posts so it can’t be that, that’s the problem.
All response much appreciated.
Regards
Dickie
The assigned categories don’t work for me. I see the checkmark appear in the category box, then it goes away and the box becomes unclickable. Then the post shows up as uncategorized. Same happens when I edit a post. Have to reset the category using quick-edit.
Thanks for all the work on this plugin, very nice.
Hi,
I am trying to get the duplicate groups to display. Anyone could help?
Thanks!
Hi i just found this plugin, I think this is perfect for making the admin area a cms!… infact this could be the best plugin I have ever found… time to test it… thanks!
This _is_ the best plugin ever found.
One tiny little request tho… when you’re showing the list of fields/groups when editing them, could you include the NAME of the field as well as the label? It would make a handy reference when coding the theme side.
Thanks for a great plugin.
Kermit Woodall
@Kermit the name of the field is shown in the field/group list in the 1.5 release which should be out soon
Thanks for such an easy to use plugin. It seems to work perfectly. Much appreciated.
Is there anyway to add to the list of avaialable date formats? It’s accepted to be different in the UK to present the data as dd/mm/yyyy wheras the only options I see in the magic fields date options is mm/dd/yyyy.
Please advise?