Today we’re excited to announce Advanced Custom Fields version 5 is ready for testing, and is planned for release later this year! We have been developing version 5 within ACF PRO for over two years and we can’t wait to share this update with our free users!
Reminder – ACF PRO is our professional package that bundles together the latest version of ACF (currently version 5.5.11) and PRO features (repeater, gallery, etc)!
Shiny new features!
Version 5 contains lots of powerful features to help you build better websites. We added more fields, more settings, more functions, more filters and more actions! You will also notice a more refined UI throughout the plugin! Here’s a short list of our favorite features:
- JS actions & filters to fully customize the editing experience!
- New field and group settings including field widths!
- New field group location rules for comments, widgets and users
- Select2 AJAX now powers many ‘select’ field types
- Local JSON improves performance and allows synchronization across environments
- Grouped conditional logic rules
- PHP + HTML5 validation
- New Datetime picker, URL and oEmbed field types
- New true false toggle switch UI
- JSON import / export
Compatibility
You will be happy to hear that version 5 prides itself on compatibility. You can expect that all template code, functions, fields, settings, actions and filters will continue to work the same as before. You can also expect that version 5 will continue to work with our premium Add-ons (updates to be released shortly)!
In short, you can expect that websites updating to version 5 will continue to work exactly the same as before, only a whole lot better!
Testing
Want to start using version 5 today? We created an entire guide with info, downloads and a feedback form. For more info, please see our Beta Testing guide. The more developers we have testing version 5, the more improvements we can make, so please be sure to start using version 5 on your current or next project!
View the Beta Testing guide and download Version 5
Looking to the future
Our move from selling individual Add-ons to an all inclusive professional version has proved to be a successful one and we don’t have any plans to change this setup. We will continue to work on ACF and ACF PRO every day and hope to release versions for both every 2 – 3 weeks. We have some exciting new features to add this year and look forward to being part of the web’s content editing movement!
Thank You
Last but not least is a BIG Thank You to our users, testers, translators and fans! The Advanced Custom Fields plugin is becoming a well rounded product thanks to your feedback, bug reports, reviews and purchases! We are hoping that you can start testing version 5 today and are looking forward to hearing your thoughts!