How to View Your WordPress Fields in a Different Way

When working on a WordPress project—whether developing a plugin, creating a custom theme, or managing a live site—understanding metadata is essential. Metadata represents that invisible layer storing key information about your posts, terms, users, and comments. However, accessing these fields can be challenging without the right tools.

Why is Understanding Metadata Important?

Every element in WordPress—a post, user, or taxonomy term—has additional data stored in the database. This metadata can be custom or generated automatically by plugins and themes. Reviewing this information often requires complex SQL queries or detailed database inspections. Having a tool, like display-metadata, that allows you to visualize metadata directly from the WordPress admin panel significantly simplifies this task.

Simplifying Metadata Management

Having an organized and clear way to review metadata offers several advantages:

• Easier Interpretation: Presenting metadata in a deserialized and structured format makes it easier to understand, even when it contains complex data.
• Access from the Admin Panel: Avoid the need to access the database directly or write custom queries. Everything is available within WordPress's familiar environment.
• Security: View all the data stored by your installed plugins.

Who Can Benefit from This Approach?

1. WordPress Developers: Quickly accessing metadata is useful for debugging and optimizing plugins or themes. It helps verify that custom fields are managed correctly and detect potential conflicts with other extensions.

2. System Administrators: Maintaining an organized and efficient database is crucial for site performance. Identifying and reviewing metadata makes cleaning unnecessary fields easier and optimizes storage.

3. Plugin Authors: Ensuring that a plugin handles metadata correctly is vital for functionality and compatibility. Reviewing this information streamlines the development and quality control processes.

4. Theme Creators: Knowing the available metadata allows you to use it effectively in templates. This information facilitates theme customization, offering greater design flexibility.

Installing the Plugin in WordPress

Installing a tool to visualize metadata directly from the admin panel is straightforward:

1. Log in to your WordPress admin panel (/wp-admin/).
2. Go to the Plugins section.
3. Select the Add New submenu option.
4. In the search bar, enter trasweb.
5. Install display-metadata and activate it from the search results.
6. Once activated, you will have access to metadata on the edit pages for posts, terms, users, and comments.

In Conclusion

Gaining a clear view of WordPress metadata can transform how you manage and develop your projects. It simplifies site debugging, optimization, and customization, providing deeper insights into stored data. There's no need to guess which fields are active or manually explore the database: the right tool gives you all the information you need, directly in your admin panel.