Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)

While the standard ACF plugin provides powerful field building and customization, ACF PRO includes advanced field types and developer frameworks designed for complex content modeling:

• Repeater Field: Create sets of sub-fields that can be repeated multiple times.
• ACF Blocks: A PHP-based framework for developing custom blocks for the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg).
• Flexible Content Field: Provides multiple layout and sub-field options for complex content structures.
• Options Page: Add custom admin pages to manage global ACF fields.
• Gallery Field: Build fully customizable image galleries.
• Clone Field: Reuse existing fields and field groups to streamline workflows.

Starting from version 6.2.0, ACF PRO supports bidirectional relationships. This allows you to link two entities (e.g., a Post and a User) such that updating the relationship on one side automatically updates it on the other. This feature is available for:

• Relationship fields
• Post Object fields
• User fields
• Taxonomy fields

In ACF PRO (v6.2.0+), Options Pages can be registered and managed directly through the WordPress admin UI instead of being defined solely in code.

Key capabilities include:

• Assigning Options Pages as child pages to any top-level menu item.
• Setting a parent option page to 'Redirect to Child Page'.
• Duplicating registered Options Pages.

To install the standard version of Advanced Custom Fields from your WordPress dashboard:

1. Navigate to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for "Advanced Custom Fields" or "ACF".
3. Click Install and then Activate.
4. Access the new ACF menu item to begin creating field groups, custom post types, or taxonomies.

Ensure your environment meets the following requirements for version 6.8.9:

• WordPress: 6.2 or higher (tested up to 7.1)
• PHP: 7.4 or higher

To install Advanced Custom Fields PRO, download the plugin as a .zip file and upload it to your WordPress site. You can upload it via the WordPress admin dashboard or using (S)FTP.

Steps:

1. Download the .zip file.
2. Upload the file via the WordPress admin area.
3. Activate the plugin.

https://gitlab.com/wordpress-premium/advanced-custom-fields-pro/-/archive/main/advanced-custom-fields-pro-main.zip

Depending on your version of ACF, the minimum requirements for WordPress and PHP vary. As of version 6.3.0, the requirements are:

• WordPress: 6.0 or newer
• PHP: 7.4 or newer

Note: Older versions (e.g., 6.2.0) supported WordPress 5.8+ and PHP 7.0+.

Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) provides a WP-CLI command suite wp acf json to manage the synchronization, import, and export of field groups, post types, taxonomies, and options pages using JSON files. This is particularly useful for CI/CD workflows and managing local development environments.

# Example workflow
$ wp acf json status
$ wp acf json sync

A static security audit of the Advanced Custom Fields PRO v6.8.9 plugin directory (720 files) was performed on 2026-08-28.

Verdict: No malware, webshells, remote-code loaders, or hidden admin backdoors were detected in the scanned files.

Note on License Bypass: The audit identified a license bypass present in acf.php. This was noted but left untouched as it was outside the scope of the malware/backdoor audit.

If you are using the_field() or the_sub_field() and want to opt-in to automatic HTML escaping before it becomes the default behavior, use the following filter:

• acf/the_field/escape_html_optin