ECI Custom Fields Underline Prefix
I’ve only just found this out for myself despite working on WordPress and reading the wiki for 2 years, very surprised but here goes. If a Custom Field is created with an underscore as the first character of the Custom Field Key, it will be hidden from the Edit Post interface. This fact has caused some Easy CSV Importer users some confusion, thinking that their Custom Fields are not being generated. Here is the link to the WordPress page that explains this further.
All In One SEO
The facts mentioned above were learned by me when testing All In One SEO Pack plugin. Many months ago the Custom Fields were not hidden, or the plugin can use differently named Custom Fields for the same purpose. Not sure when things changed but the plugins key names do have underscored prefixes. I visited the plugins support forum but it looks overwhelmed with little response to new threads so I won’t waste my time there. My job is done folks, research complete and there does not appear to be a fault with the plugin in this area. Please check your pages meta values to establish if All In One SEO is using keywords or descriptions created by ECI 2.
An important question I would like answered is, do the Custom Field meta keys work if we remove the underscore. I’m not going to test this thought right now as I have an endless list of things to do. If anyone knows the answer or would like to investage, simply request Contributer access to the blog, write a post regarding your answer with a link to your own site.
Ryan I have tested this and I can tell you it doesn’t work if the underscore is removed. My example, I am using directory press and need to be able to create pages with a page template. To choose the template I need to use the custom field “_wp_page_template” and then the name of the template. If I use the custom field without the underscore “wp_page_template” the page is created with the default page template although in the edit page section the custom field is displayed with my chosen template name; it’s just not actually being selected. This is the same with all the custom fields that begin with an underscore – they show up in the edit page/post section but don’t do what they are supposed to without the underscore.
Hi
That is good information. A plugin could easily be adapted to work with or without the underscore simply by looking for one then looking for the other if the first does not exist.
But I would assume that most do not as you say. Next step is to look for a plugin that displays the hidden custom fields or I could add an option to ECI to do display the information. Actually that is what I will do, admin only messages that list the hidden fields for the sake of testing. Will do it tonight.
Thanks a lot
Ryan