By Marc Dechèvre on Tuesday, 17 August 2021
Category: August

Custom Fields - Episode 6: Make more with extensions

After 5 Episodes in the Joomla Community Magazine about Custom Fields in Joomla core, obviously you know how powerful they are. But as a human being, you always dream of more...

...like having

  1. even more Types of Custom Fields (to display Maps, Galleries, Download buttons, Links to Articles, ...)
  2. third-party extensions which would integrate the native Custom Fields, thereby allowing you to enrich your content in those "compatible" extensions
  3. extensions specially designed to make Custom Fields more powerful, for example by allowing to filter on Articles

With this new Episode, I will try to fulfil your dreams by trying to gather them all (and if I missed some please just tell me and I'll be happy to update the list 😉)

So now we can truly say that the only limit to what you can do with Joomla is... your imagination!

First and foremost, the right place to find extensions is of course the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED)

Beginning 2018, a new Category called "Custom Fields" has been added to the Joomla Extensions Directory, which is an excellent thing:
https://extensions.joomla.org/category/authoring-a-content/custom-fields/ 

But this underestimates the number of plugins/extensions available out there because:

  1. not all authors have moved their extension to that Category, especially if the main purpose of the extension fits better in another main Category
  2. many authors have simply published their work directly on Github for instance, since new Custom Fields Types are "just little plugins"

Note that there is no particular order in the following list. I simply mention all plugins/extensions I have heard of -free or paid- since the aim is here to share a maximum of tools.

Custom Fields Plugins (namely new Types)

By Allon Moritz (free)

https://github.com/Digital-Peak/DPFields :

By Elisa Foltyn (free)

By Tassos Marinos (free and paid)

https://www.tassos.gr/joomla-extensions/advanced-custom-fields

By Sergio Iglesias (free)

By JUG Nuremberg (free)

By nx-designs (free)

By Lomart (free)

By Christian Hent (free)

By RegularLabs (free/paid)

By Stereonomy (free/paid)

By Joomill (free/paid)

https://www.joomill-extensions.com/extensions/custom-fields-plugins & https://github.com/Joomill?tab=repositories 
See the differences between free/paid on https://www.joomill-extensions.com/extensions/custom-fields-plugins/compare

By Nordmograph (paid)

By EasyLayouts (paid)

https://www.easylayouts.net/
This extension (see below) comes with 2 extra Custom Fields :

By JoomlaXTC (paid)

By FireCoders (paid)

Par Cory Webb (paid)

By Perfect Web Team (paid)

PWT Image is a paid extension allowing to resize/crop/... images and for example, force a given ratio. But it can also be used as an independent Custom Field

By Cédric Keiflin (paid)

Custom Fields CK allows customizing the layout of Custom Fields

By Creation-Web (free)

OpenStreetMap Custom Field

By GD.S (free)

Location Lists allows you to add ajax-driven dropdown sets as custom fields in your Joomla! site.
You can choose from a simple country list to a Country - State - City dropdown set

By Brian Teeman (free)

YouTube/Vimeo Custom Field (up to 224 times faster)

By RicheyWeb (paid)

By zero24 (free)

This Joomla plugin lets you create new fields of type 'privacycheckbox' in any extensions where custom fields are supported

By it-conserv.de (free)

With this plugin, you can expand the "Custom Fields" under Joomla 4 to include the "File" field. While the existing "Media" field only supports images, it is possible to offer files with this field. The field is also based on the media manager and its settings.
Can be used for example for mp3, mp4, zip, PDF, csv, ...

Extensions having integrated Custom Fields to offer more flexibility

DP Calendar (free/paid)

EasyLayouts (paid)

Allows to create your layouts easily without having to play with Overrides & Alternate Layouts (note: it also allows to customize your front-end Edit view, including Custom Fields)

d2content

d2 Content is a component for Joomla! - with a FREE and a PRO version - that helps your customers manage and edit items in the backend more easily.
d2 Content works along with Joomla's standard Articles Manager (com_content) and with your existing articles and custom fields (since d2 Content PRO 2.1).
Thanks to d2 Content you will get an easy form for editing your content in the backend - just the fields you need.

Acymailing (free/paid)

Since version 5.9 AcyMailing integrates Custom Fields, as seen on the changelog :

Since version 5.10, Joomla custom fields can be inserted in a custom plugin template using the syntax {custom:my_field}

RO CSVI (paid)

CFI by JoomLine (free)

The plugin is intended for import and export of articles and values of custom fields

OS Downloads by JoomlaShack (paid)

Since January 2018 you can add your Custom Fields :

j2store (free)

This allows adding Joomla's custom fields to the J2Store product pages. The content fields will be displayed in the product description section.

JT Showon by JoomTools (free)

The plugin JT - Showon extends the custom fields with new functionality to show the field in dependence on another custom field.
Example: if one selects option 1 from the custom field "A", then custom field "B" shows, etc

Regular Labs (paid)

Latest News Enhanced Pro (paid)

YOOtheme PRO templates (paid)

YOOtheme Pro can load custom fields from an Article, Category and User. Joomla allows you to add custom fields and field groups to articles and categories in the Article manager and to users in the User Manager.

TF Structured Data (free)

Joomla plugin to add structured data (rich snippets) to content items using Joomla custom fields

Pages by JoomlaTools (free)

Pages allow many things. In particular, it allows making very easy overrides, including Custom Fields

Filters and Custom Fields

Sometimes you want to filter on Custom Fields.

According to your needs, we have found different solutions:

[ edit ] New for Joomla 4: JFilter by Blue Coder aka Sakis Terzis (free/paid)

This filter tool is pretty handy as it is direclty based on the Joomla native Smart Search engine.

https://blue-coder.com/jfilters

Note also this very interesting blog post explaining how you can customize the Search Results (you can change the layout, add the intro image, add a Custom Field, ...) - independently of the extension.

https://blue-coder.com/help/blog/customizing-search-results

[ edit ] New for Joomla 3 and 4: DJ-ContentFilters by DJ-Extensions (paid)

Note: this is a YooTheme PRO plugin so obviously it requires the use of YooTheme PRO

You can choose the fields you need for your search, set the order in which they should be displayed, and mix it up with beautiful styles.

https://dj-extensions.com/yootheme/dj-contentfilters

DPFields (free)

https://joomla.digital-peak.com/products/dpfields

JoomLine (free)

JL Content Fields Filter - This is a free module that filters Joomla articles on custom fields (free)
http://joomline.org/extensions/modules-for-joomla/jlcontentfieldsfilter.html 
https://github.com/Joomline/JlContentFieldsFilter

Pascal Lecomte (free)

Pascal Lecomte -aka pmlecomte on the French Joomla forum- had adapted his Filter Module (working for Tags initially) for Custom Fields
https://www.conseilgouz.com/sources/simple-isotope
Demo (on Tags) : https://www.conseilgouz.com/developpements-joomla
You can also display the Fields in the output with the syntax {fieldname}

EasyLayouts (paid)

https://www.easylayouts.net/

Joomlart has MegaFilter (paid)

which integrates Custom Fields but with their own layout
https://www.joomlart.com/joomla/extensions/ja-megafilter-for-joomla

Joomla CFS (free)

Not really a Filter Module but more a Search on Custom Fields
Extension: www.joomla-cfs.com
Demo demo.joomla-cfs.com

Alexandre Elisé (free)

System - Content Custom Filter. Custom fields filter plugin using Joomla! core features
https://github.com/alexandreelise/plg_system_contentcustomfilter

nx-designs.ch (paid)

Filter by Customfield values, order by Customfield Value
https://nx-designs.ch/ext/exposer  

JoomCar (paid)

Search/Filter for Custom Fields / Tags (also for Custom Fields on Contacts)
https://joomcar.net/products/joomla/joomla-articles-good-search-module

RegularLabs (paid)

Articles Anywhere allows filtering on Custom Fields
https://docs3.regularlabs.com/articlesanywhere/data-tags/overview#custom-fields

Javascript (free)

Last but not least, you can also find alternative/creative ways to filter your content, for example by playing directly with Javascript.
See an example of such a filter on https://www.burden-eu.net/outputs/bod-database (the filters just add a class to the corresponding Cards in order to show/hide them)
If you are not comfortable with Javascript, consider starting with this nice little tool: uilang.com (free)

Other

Canonical URL (free)

It is not a Custom FIeld as such, but an example of the use of Custom Field in order to get a canonical URL in Joomla

ChocoFields (free)

A plugin allowing to populate Joomla Custom Fields from Web Services

An override of the Email plugin

The native Email plugin displays "mailto:" in the front-end, which is not very nice.

So here is a nice little override that will not only drop this "mailto:" text, but also allow to choose between "my Description" or "This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." for the display

Alter Fields (free and pro) by AlterBrains

Display Custom Fields in the backend items list views (with some handy settings like CSS classes for table column heading and data cell etc).

Supports display of Custom Fields for Joomla Articles, Users, Contacts and Categories by default.

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