Advanced Custom Fields Options Page: Ultimate Guide

Advanced Custom Fields(ACF) is a popular WordPress plugin that empowers developers and administrators to extend and customize the functionality of their WordPress websites. One of the powerful features ACF offers is the ‘Options Page’ functionality, which allows the creation of dedicated settings pages within the WordPress admin area.

In this article, we will delve into the concept of ACF Option Pages, explore their various use cases, and provide a step-by-step guide on creating them.

What is ACF Options Page

When building or managing a WordPress website, consistency and efficiency are key—especially when dealing with settings that impact the entire site. That’s where the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) Options Page comes into play. This powerful feature provides a centralized, intuitive interface for storing and managing global settings—things like contact details, default images, social media links, or even site-wide layout preferences.

Rather than scattering these configuration options across multiple admin areas—or worse, hardcoding them into your theme—the ACF Options Page keeps everything in one place. It supports a wide range of input types, including text fields, dropdowns, checkboxes, and image uploads, making it incredibly flexible and developer-friendly. Whether you’re a beginner looking to streamline your backend workflow or an experienced developer aiming to build scalable, maintainable sites, the ACF Options Page is an indispensable way to enhance site-wide consistency and control.

Key Takeaways from This Article

• Understand what the ACF Options Page is and why it’s useful for WordPress sites.
• Learn the benefits of using an options page—like centralized settings and no coding required.
• Discover real-world use cases where options pages can make website management easier.
• Learn how to create an ACF Options Page using both the ACF interface and PHP code.
• See how to add multiple subpages for organizing different settings.
• Understand how to assign custom field groups to an options page using ACF’s location rules.
• Learn how to retrieve and display field values from the options page inside theme template files.

Benefits of using the Options Page

• Centralized Management: The ACF options page lets you store all your site-wide settings in one place. This means you don’t have to search through different templates or code files to make changes. For example, if your site has contact details like phone number, email, and address, you can manage them all from one options page—making updates quick and keeping everything consistent across the site.
  
• No Need for Coding Skills: The options page can be accessed by admins or content managers without needing any coding knowledge. For example, if you have an options page for social media links, your team can update those links easily without editing theme files. This gives non-technical users the freedom to manage site-wide settings.

• Cleaner and More Organized Code: Using the options page helps keep your code neat by separating settings from design and layout files. This improves your site’s structure and makes it easier to manage, especially when troubleshooting or making future updates.

• Friendly Interface for Non-Developers: The ACF options page provides a simple and visual way to manage settings. You can add fields like text boxes, dropdowns, checkboxes, and color pickers. For example, if you’re setting up a header options page, users can choose the logo, background color, or menu style—without touching any code. This makes customization easy for everyone.

What Are the Best Use Cases for the ACF Options Page?

Let’s explore a few examples of how the ACF Options page feature can enhance your workflow and improve your way of working:

Consider a scenario where you’re building a custom WordPress theme for a client, and they want a dedicated settings page to manage various aspects of their website easily. This includes options like the site logo, colors, typography, social media links, and other global settings.

In this case, you can utilize the ACF options page feature to create a user-friendly interface for managing these settings. ACF provides a convenient way to create custom fields and organize them into logical groups on a dedicated options page within the WordPress admin area.

Let’s consider another example: Suppose you are working on a WordPress website that requires the inclusion of a promotional banner that will be displayed across multiple pages. However, the content and appearance of this banner may change frequently, and you want to provide a simple and efficient way for the website owner to manage it.

In this scenario, you can utilize the ACF options page to create a dedicated section for managing the promotional banner. Using custom fields provided by ACF, you can offer options to update the banner image, text, call-to-action button, and other relevant settings.

Through the ACF options page, the website owner gains a user-friendly interface where they can easily make modifications to the banner content without editing individual pages or templates. They can upload new images, change text, update links, and customize the banner’s design, all in one place.

How to Create an ACF Options Page

Let’s illustrate the process of creating an ACF options Page using a practical example. You can create an options page with two options through PHP code and through ACF itself.

Adding an Options Page through ACF

• Ensure that you have the ACF plugin installed and activated on your WordPress website.
• Go to ACF in your WordPress dashboard, then click on “Options Page” and select “Add New.”

• Then, you need to provide some information. First, you have to give it a title and slug, and you have to specify its parent page.
• Once you’ve filled in everything, click the “Save Changes” button to keep all your updates.

Adding an Options Page through PHP Code

• Open up your ‘functions.php’ file, and add these code snippets to register an ACF options page.

 if( function_exists('acf_add_options_page') ) {
 acf_add_options_page(array(
      'page_title' => 'Theme Options',
      'menu_title' => 'Theme Options',
      'menu_slug' => 'theme-options',
      'capability' => 'edit_posts',
      'redirect' => true
   ));
}

The ‘function_exists‘ function mentioned in the code snippet checks if a particular function is available on your website. If the function exists, it proceeds to create an options page using the provided details, including the page title, menu title, menu slug, capability, and the option to enable redirection.

Adding Multiple Subpages

You can also create subpages within an options page by using the following code snippet:

if( function_exists('acf_add_options_page') ) {
    
    acf_add_options_page(array(
        'page_title'    => 'Theme General Settings',
        'menu_title'    => 'Theme Settings',
        'menu_slug'     => 'theme-general-settings',
        'capability'    => 'edit_posts',
        'redirect'      => true
    ));
    
    acf_add_options_sub_page(array(
        'page_title'    => 'Theme Header Settings',
        'menu_title'    => 'Header',
        'parent_slug'   => 'theme-general-settings',
    ));
    
    acf_add_options_sub_page(array(
        'page_title'    => 'Theme Footer Settings',
        'menu_title'    => 'Footer',
        'parent_slug'   => 'theme-general-settings',
    ));
 }

This code snippet first checks for the existence of a specific function using the function_exists() function. Once confirmed, it proceeds to create sub-pages using the acf_add_options_sub_page() function. This function allows you to create sub-pages under the options page by specifying the parent slug, i.e., ‘theme-general-settings‘, which is defined earlier in the above code.

How to add Field Group to the Options Page

• Create a field group using the ACF plugin.
• Then, Within the field group, add subfields to define the specific types of data you want to display.

Please check our detailed article on How to Create a Field Group in ACF.

• Navigate to the Settings section within the ACF plugin and select the ‘Location Rules’ tab.

• Select the ‘Options Page‘ under the first dropdown, then specify the conditions and choose the specific options page where you want to show these subfields.

How to Display Subfields on the Options Page

Once you have configured the Location rules to specify the desired options page, the subfields you created within the field group will be displayed on that particular options page.

Retrieving ACF Options Page Subfields Data in Template files

To retrieve the value of the options page into your template files, you can follow these steps:

• Open the template file where you want to display the data. This could be a header.php, footer.php, or any other template file where you want to use the options page data.

• Add the following code snippet to retrieve and display the value of the desired field from the ACF options page and then save the file.

<?php the_field('header_title', 'option'); ?>

Here, ‘the_field’ is a function used to retrieve and display the value of a field.

The first parameter, ‘header_title,‘ specifies the name of the field you want to retrieve the value. Ensure it matches the field name you set up in your ACF options page field group.

The second parameter, ‘option,‘ indicates that you want to retrieve the value from the ACF options page. This parameter is only necessary if you are specifically retrieving a value from the options page.

Conclusion

As you can see ACF plugin’s Options page feature offers a powerful solution for extending and customizing WordPress websites. It provides a dedicated location for managing global settings, reducing the need to navigate through multiple files or hardcode theme files. By utilizing the ACF Options page, developers and administrators can create user-friendly interfaces for clients to easily modify site-wide settings, such as colors, logos, typography, and more.

FAQs on ACF Options Page