ACF Chat Fridays give the Advanced Custom Fields community a chance to hear directly from the team behind the plugin. In the April session, Matt Shaw and Anthony Burchell walked through the newly released ACF 6.8 update, demonstrated the experimental schema.org integration for JSON-LD output, and introduced long-requested WP-CLI commands for working with ACF JSON in development workflows.

Hosted by Matt Shaw and Anthony Burchell, with additional Q&A from Phil Johnston.

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Session Recording

Watch the full session below or jump to the highlights in the summary.

Session Summary

This month’s ACF Chat Fridays focused on the newly released ACF 6.8, a major update that brings together several of the team’s most requested and most forward-looking features.

Matt Shaw opened with an overview of the release, including Abilities API integration, experimental schema.org support for automatic JSON-LD output, and new WP-CLI commands for importing, exporting, syncing, and checking the status of ACF JSON field groups. The release also includes further improvements to Blocks V3, including quality-of-life enhancements and a broad set of bug fixes.

A large part of the session centered on the new schema functionality. The ACF team demonstrated how field groups can now be mapped to schema.org properties so that structured data is output automatically in JSON-LD format. The feature is designed to make site content easier for search engines, rich results, and AI systems to interpret, while still giving developers flexibility over which fields are included and how they are rendered.

The session then shifted into practical developer Q&A, including guidance on when to sync ACF JSON field groups, how inline editing behaves by default in ACF Blocks, how helper functions improve the editing experience, and what is currently blocking support for collaborative editing in WordPress.

What’s New in ACF 6.8

ACF 6.8 was presented as a substantial release with improvements across multiple areas of the plugin.

The headline feature is integration with the WordPress Core Abilities API, making it possible to use ACF alongside tools such as the WordPress MCP adapter to manage field groups, post types, and taxonomies in new ways. The team also highlighted the release of WP-CLI support for ACF JSON workflows, something the community has been asking for for a long time.

In addition, the release includes continued refinement of Blocks V3, including the ability to customize button text while editing blocks, along with a long list of bug fixes and smaller improvements.

Experimental Schema Support for JSON-LD

One of the most detailed parts of the session was the walkthrough of ACF’s new experimental schema support.

Matt Shaw showed how developers can enable schema support and assign a schema.org type to an ACF-registered post type. From there, individual fields in a field group can be mapped to corresponding schema.org properties. In the demo, a recipe post type was used to show how fields such as description, image, ingredients, instructions, prep time, and cook time can be structured and output as valid JSON-LD.

The team emphasized that this implementation is marked experimental because schema support is still evolving, and this is ACF’s first release of the feature. Even so, the early implementation already supports:

  • Mapping fields directly to schema.org properties
  • Assigning multiple types to a single content model
  • Supporting nested structures through repeaters and subfields
  • Outputting more detailed object formats where supported, such as image objects instead of plain URLs
  • Automatically inferring supporting parent types when needed for valid JSON-LD output

Another notable detail is that ACF only outputs fields that are explicitly mapped to schema properties. That means developers keep full control over what appears in structured data.

Schema Works with Blocks Too

A useful clarification from the session was that schema output is not limited to ACF-registered post types.

Matt confirmed that schema support can also be assigned to ACF Blocks, with types defined directly in block.json. That means developers can attach structured data to specific blocks, such as an FAQ block, rather than only at the post type level.

This opens up some especially practical use cases for modular block-based content, where structured data needs to be attached to a discrete component on the page.

New WP-CLI Commands for ACF JSON Workflows

Anthony Burchell followed the schema demo with a quick look at the new WP-CLI commands for ACF.

The new command set focuses on ACF JSON workflows and includes support for:

  • status
  • sync
  • export
  • import

The demo showed how these commands can replace manual syncing in the WordPress admin, especially for teams using local JSON as part of a deployment pipeline. For developers working across local, staging, and production environments, this makes it much easier to automate field group management instead of clicking through admin screens.

The team framed this as particularly useful in CI/CD workflows, where exporting field groups from one environment and syncing them into another can now be scripted more cleanly.

Q&A

Questions and answers from the session may have been edited for clarity.

Q: Does ACF support real-time collaborative editing yet?

A: Not yet. Matt explained that collaborative editing in WordPress is currently blocked for anything using a traditional metabox, which is how ACF primarily works today. The team is actively exploring ways around that limitation and expects to share updates soon, but collaborative editing is not supported in ACF just yet.

Q: How does ACF handle nested schema.org types, such as recipe instructions?

A: ACF supports this by letting you map a top-level field, such as a repeater, to a schema.org property and then choose an output format for that property. Once the output format is set to a nested object type, subfields can be mapped to the appropriate subproperties of that object.

Q: Can generated schema be tied to a specific block instead of a post type?

A: Yes. The team confirmed that schema support can be assigned to ACF Blocks as well as ACF-registered post types. For blocks, schema types can be set directly in block.json, allowing JSON-LD output to be attached to a specific block instance.

Q: Is schema only supported for post types registered through ACF?

A: Not exclusively. Matt noted that there is a filter that can be used to enable schema support for native or third-party registered post types as well. Once enabled, ACF should still apply its automatic type inference based on the schema properties mapped in the field group.

Q: Can I use the featured image instead of a custom image field in schema output?

A: Yes. The featured image can be used, and it should work similarly to a custom image field. The demo used a custom image field mainly to show different output formats, but the team confirmed that featured images can be pulled into the schema output as well.

Q: Do I need to sync JSON field groups in production?

A: Not necessarily. If you are not editing field groups in production, there may be no need to sync them there. ACF can read directly from local JSON without the field groups being stored in the database. Syncing becomes more relevant when you expect to edit field groups in that environment, such as during active staging or client revision cycles.

Q: What does auto inline editing do by default in ACF Blocks?

A: Phil Johnston explained that auto inline editing only detects cases where the ACF field value is the only thing inside an HTML element or attribute. In those cases, ACF can automatically make the content inline editable. For more customized setups, developers should use helper functions instead.

Q: When should I use helper functions instead of auto inline editing?

A: Helper functions are the better choice when you want a more polished editing experience or when your field values are not used in the exact patterns required for auto-detection. The team described auto inline editing as a fast way to get started, while helper functions offer more control for production-ready block experiences.

Q: Can block toolbar fields be shown conditionally based on another field’s value?

A: The team believes this should be possible by adding conditional logic in the relevant filter, based on the value of another field. While they did not present a fully tested example during the session, the guidance was that developers can likely conditionally add toolbar fields by checking the value of a select field and adjusting the helper function output accordingly.

Resources & Links

Next On ACF Chat Fridays

Register today for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays. Sessions are typically held on the first Friday of every month, and the team continues to use them as a space for release updates, live demos, and direct developer Q&A.

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The list of upcoming sessions is below.

  • May 1, 2026
  • June 5, 2026

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