ACF Chat Fridays provide a space for the Advanced Custom Fields community to engage directly with the plugin’s development team. The February 6th session took a community-first approach, functioning as an open forum where participants could receive tailored architectural advice for their specific WordPress projects alongside a briefing on the latest experimental features in ACF 6.8 Beta 2.
Hosted by Iain Poulson, Anthony Burchell, and Matt Shaw.
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Session Recording
Watch the full session below or skip to the highlights in the session summary.
Session Summary
Iain Poulson kicked off the session with an update on the ACF 6.8 release cycle, which is now in its second beta phase. Following the January discussion on the Abilities API, Beta 2 introduces a major focus on “GEO”—Generative Engine Optimization. This experimental feature aims to ensure that site content is better surfaced and cited in AI-driven search results, such as those from ChatGPT and Gemini.
The team explained that Beta 2 implements this by outputting structured data via JSON-LD. By generating a schema.org-compliant JSON blob within the page source, ACF helps LLMs and AI search engines build a clearer picture of a site’s content model. While this is currently labeled as an experimental feature, the team noted that it builds on the same logic Google has used for years to enhance e-commerce results, now adapted for the new world of AI overviews.
The remainder of the session functioned as an open office hours forum, allowing the engineering team to provide one-on-one consulting for complex project builds. This included a deep dive into content modeling strategies for high-complexity sites, moving away from simple taxonomies toward more robust relationship-based architectures.
Q&A
Questions and answers from the session may have been edited for clarity.
Q: I am converting a static municipal website to WordPress. Should I use taxonomies or relationship fields to link committees, their members, and their meetings?
A: For a complex setup involving committees, members, and meetings, the team recommends using three separate Custom Post Types linked via Relationship fields. While taxonomies are useful for simple classification, the fact that each unit requires its own specific data—such as meeting agendas, term expiration dates, and contact information—makes the Relationship field a much more powerful choice. This approach allows you to query data naturally, such as displaying all meetings associated with a specific committee.
Q: How should I handle the connection between members and committees specifically?
A: You should utilize the bidirectional setting on the ACF Relationship field for members and committees. This allows the data to work both ways, making it easy to see which committees a member belongs to while simultaneously listing all members on a specific committee page. For meetings, a one-way relationship pointing toward the parent committee is typically sufficient to organize the schedule.
Resources & Links
Coming Up 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. Questions and suggestions for the development team are always welcome.
Register for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays here: https://wpeng.in/acf-chat-fridays/
The list of upcoming sessions is below.
- March 6, 2026
- April 10, 2026
- May 8, 2026
- June 12, 2026
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