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Sarah Gooding

Easy Meta Builder Launches “No Code” Plugin for Adding Meta Fields to WordPress

easy-meta-builder

Over the weekend, Easy Meta Builder launched a new custom fields marketplace built around CMB2, a popular library that WordPress developers use to easily build metaboxes, custom fields, and forms. CMB2 is active on more than 50,0000 sites. Easy Meta Builder offers a “no code” way to use CMB2 for adding meta fields.

WordPress plugin and application developer Ryan Fugate is the creator of the product. He’s pursuing a commercial model similar to Easy Digital Downloads where the core plugin is free and custom CMB fields plugins will be sold as add-ons.

Easy Meta Builder works with custom post types, including those created by other plugins, out of the box. The free core plugin supports 15 field types, such as checkboxes, radio buttons, text areas for email address or code input, file upload, and more. The plugin allows you to do things like add extra fields to the user profile page inside the WordPress admin, a task that’s easy for developers but not as easy for non-developers.

user-profile

“I wanted to make it easier for others and myself to add CMB2 fields to WordPress,” Fugate said. “Also, I want to show that you can monetize OSS frameworks and how to do it.” He is targeting site builders, beginners, and developers who want a shortcut when developing custom fields.

Fugate is working on getting the free core plugin added to WordPress.org and has opened the marketplace of extensions with an Advanced Fields plugin priced at $19.

“Separately all these code snippets for fields are not sellable but when you put it all together as one product it works,” he said. “I hope other maintainers of CMB2 fields want to monetize their code through the site.”

Fugate plans to open up the marketplace to third party developers after he releases his first round of extensions. As there are already a variety of third party custom field types available on GitHub, Fugate said he hopes to work with CMB2 field code snippet authors to get their work put into extensions and help them start selling in the Easy Meta Builder marketplace.

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5 responses to “Easy Meta Builder Launches “No Code” Plugin for Adding Meta Fields to WordPress”

  2. CMB2 is an excellent solution with outstanding developers, great docs and a great api and I use it a lot.

    The thing is, CMB2, is meant to save time. While it is fantastic, it gives you an OK end-result that just works (which is incredibly valuable). I think if your product is about providing a UI, you have to strive to deliver an excellent end-result imo. And you can’t really do that on top of CMB2, unless you’re making drastic changes or forking the project.

    For example, CMB2 has OK styling and design, but it’s not fantastic and you don’t have a lot of options on that end. It has incredible flexibility on the PHP end, but it doesn’t let you do a lot of clientside operations, like advanced conditional logic that doesn’t require a page refresh. You can tack that on of course like an add-on, but it’s not part of the core API.

    So CMB2 is such a big value add as a developer who just needs to plumb in a decent user interface with a lot of functionality and good API and do all that without reinventing the wheel. But if you want your UI to really shine, to be exceptional, it falls short. And that’s not a knock on CMB2. But from a paid UI generator my expectations would be higher than just OK. And if you center your product around it, you also inherit its limitations.

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  3. Is it just me or this Easy Meta Builder launch seems a bit rushed, with little or no information on how this works with/on top of CMB2?

    I’m not saying it’s not a good thing, but I would really like to know more about it before commiting to use. It’s lacking a lot of info, IMHO.

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  4. Looks interesting but the lack of information leaves a lot to be desired and all the standard metafields that come with CMB2 are part of the advanced add-on. Though thats fine if that makes it a good proposition in ease of use. But again its hard to tell, nor is their information about how to handle outputting your custom meta. It’s easy to do but the site doesn’t really walk you through it.

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