Display Posts and Custom Fields in WordPress (Without Code Bloat)

Displaying posts and custom fields in WordPress should be simple — but often it’s anything but. If you’ve ever tried building a custom directory, portfolio, event calendar, or WooCommerce product archive with extra data fields, you’ve likely run into the limitations of WordPress’s default capabilities.

At WPLake, we created Advanced Views to bridge this gap — helping you display posts and custom fields easily, cleanly, and without writing PHP code. Whether you’re building with ACF, Meta Box, Pods, or WooCommerce, this guide will show you the most effective way to build dynamic, reusable content layouts in WordPress.

Let’s walk through the common challenges and show you how to solve them the modern way.

Custom fields are extra pieces of data added to WordPress posts, pages, or custom post types (CPTs). WordPress itself doesn’t provide much in the way of structured content beyond a title and content block, but plugins like Advanced Custom Fields, Pods, and Meta Box give developers and site builders the ability to create rich, structured content types.

Common real-world uses include:

• Team Members: name, role, bio, profile image, LinkedIn link
• Events: date, location, RSVP link, organiser
• Properties: size, location, number of rooms, price
• Courses: instructor, module count, syllabus PDF
• Products (WooCommerce): technical specs, badges, shipping lead time, related documents

These fields are often critical to how a site is used, searched, and filtered — but they don’t automatically show up on the front end unless you code it yourself. That’s where the problems begin.

If you’re working directly with PHP templates, you need to manually query the database, handle metadata, structure loops, and ensure all your layout logic works for different post types and conditions. A typical solution might involve a combination of:

• WP_Query
• get_post_meta() or get_field()
• Custom loops inside archive-{posttype}.php or page-template.php
• Conditional logic to avoid layout breaks

Even a basic grid of team members could require several dozen lines of PHP and HTML markup — code that can break when fields are renamed or if a client accidentally changes something in the backend.

It’s inefficient, repetitive, and hard to manage across multiple sites or developers.

Advanced Views is a lightweight, developer-friendly plugin that lets you build dynamic content layouts using your existing custom fields — without touching PHP.

It works with:

• ACF
• Meta Box
• Pods
• WooCommerce
• And any post type or custom field saved in postmeta

Instead of writing code, Advanced Views lets you combine Views and Cards to control exactly how your content appears:

• Views let you assign and style fields for individual posts or items (like a single team member or product card).
• Cards let you query and display multiple posts using one of your Views as the layout template.

This separation makes it easier to reuse layouts across your site while maintaining full control over the design.

Let’s say you’ve created a “Team Member” custom post type with fields like:

• Profile photo (image)
• Full name (title)
• Job title (text)
• Department (taxonomy)
• LinkedIn profile (URL)

Using Advanced Views, you can:

• Set up a View layout with image, name, and job title
• Add a button that links to their LinkedIn
• Create a Card that queries all “Team Member” posts
• Filter by department (e.g. only “Engineering”)
• Sort alphabetically or by a manual order field

Note: filtering and sorting by custom fields (meta) is available in Advanced Views Pro.

Once your view is ready, simply paste the shortcode onto any page:

e.g. shortcode [avf_view name="team member" view-id="651d5d75bfdf2"]

You can reuse that same view anywhere, even across multisite installs.

WooCommerce is one of the most common places users want to display extra data — but customising its templates can be a nightmare.

With Advanced Views, you can:

• Show technical product details outside of the product page
• Build a comparison grid of related products
• Filter products by category, tag, or custom taxonomy
• Highlight fields like lead time, energy rating, or shipping options

Because Advanced Views integrates with WooCommerce’s product post type, you can treat it like any other — pulling product data and meta fields right into your custom layout.

This is especially powerful for product directories, quote-based systems, or stores using ACF for extended product information.

Advanced Views Pro takes things even further by supporting:

• Repeater Fields: Display lists of benefits, bullet points, daily schedules
• Relationship Fields: Link team members to departments, courses to instructors
• Gallery Fields: Show image galleries in modals or sliders
• Splide Slider Integration: Turn a repeater or gallery field into a smooth, responsive slider
• Conditional Logic: Only show a field if it’s not empty or meets certain criteria

This makes it possible to build complex, interactive content layouts without needing a frontend framework or custom plugin.

Examples include:

• A property listing with image gallery and map
• An itinerary builder with daily entries and optional highlights
• A course page that shows related blog posts or downloadable resources

No content display system is complete without powerful filtering. With Advanced Views, you can:

• Filter posts by taxonomy (e.g. “category = tutorials”) — Pro only
• Filter by custom meta field values (e.g. “price < 1000”) — Pro only
• Combine filters (e.g. only show courses by Instructor X that are free) — Pro only
• Ajax Paginate for your results automatically — Pro only
• Order by date, title, or any custom field — Pro only for meta sorting

Whether you're showing 10 testimonials or 200 property listings, your site stays fast and easy to navigate.

Every Advanced View renders clean, efficient HTML using a modified Twig template system—no proprietary or bloated code. You can:

• Add Tailwind classes directly within your Twig layouts
• Style your cards using frameworks like Bootstrap
• Wrap fields with your own HTML elements (<div>, <figure>, <a>) inside Twig templates
• Integrate easily with page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, or Gutenberg

That means your designs are always portable and future-proof, even if your theme or plugins change.

Being able to display posts and custom fields reliably and repeatably is super powerful thing for any WordPress project. It unlocks real functionality for your site — the kind of dynamic content layouts that impress clients and save hours of development time.

With Advanced Views, you can:

• Empower non-technical users to manage complex content
• Avoid hardcoding custom loops or template logic
• Build reusable, modular layouts for any project
• Offer custom solutions without creating custom plugins
• Hand off sites with confidence — they just work

Whether you’re building a property directory, knowledge base, staff portal, or product showcase, Advanced Views gives you the control you need.

You can try Advanced Views Lite for free on the WordPress plugin directory, or unlock the full power of custom field display with Advanced Views Pro.

Start building better WordPress websites — the flexible, maintainable, low-code way.

👉 Download Advanced Views on WordPress.org
👉 Explore Advanced Views Pro
👉 Browse the Documentation

From creating your first dynamic content view to refining a custom site for a client, Advanced Views offers a smarter way to display posts and custom fields in WordPress.