How to Enable and Use Custom Fields in WordPress Without Plugins

An annoying problem I’ve had lately that somehow is almost impossible to troubleshoot online is enabling or finding custom fields in WordPress without adding a plugin like Advanced Custom Fields (which is typically what I recommend using). This should work I believe with any version of WordPress after about 3.1 as well, where the Custom Fields are hidden by default.

Enabling Custom Fields Without a Plugin

1. Go to the post or page where you want them to be displayed in the edit post/page screen.

2. Near the top-right corner of the window, click the “Screen Options” button. In my image I have labeled this, “A.”

3. Check the box that has appeared labeled, “Custom Fields.” In my image I have labeled this, “B.”

4. That’s it! Your custom fields should appear at the bottom of the screen, scroll down if you don’t see it.

A particular problem I was having was using S2Member Pro, which is a great plugin that allows custom membership options and subscriber roles. I have it set up to work with Authorize.net for payment, and in order to accept payments on the site, you must have an SSL certificate. So how do I force SSL authentication?

With Custom fields!  The short tutorial s2Member gives you just says to enter a field s2member_force_ssl = yes

So how do we do that? It’s pretty basic. You go down to the custom fields section, click “Enter new” under the drop-down box for ‘Name’ and enter “s2member_force_ssl".

For the Value, you simply put, “yes”.

Then you save your changes and you are good to go. Note, of course, that you must have a valid SSL certificate set up for the site for this to work. Hopefully this will help you in your website journey!

 

About Brian Johnson

Brian Johnson is a website developer and designer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a passion for code and WordPress. He spends his days building WordPress websites for small businesses, developing new code with the online community, and living life.

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