29th Jan '24
/
3 comments

How to Update Custom Fields with Default Values For Existing Posts when using ACF

Let's take a scenario where there are 10 Pages in a WordPress site.

You proceed to create a Text-type of custom field called, say, "Custom Title" using ACF for Pages and set its default value to "This is the default value" (not the most practical, but just to illustrate...).

When a new post (of the post type to which the field group is attached) is added and the field is left empty, the Custom Title post meta will be created and updated with the default value after the Publish button is clicked.

What about the existing Pages?

Unfortunately, the post meta does not exist for them and hence the default value does not appear.

Unless you edit each of those 10 Pages manually and click the Update button.

This is not a problem with a few posts, but what if there are 100s of posts?

This Pro tutorial shows how we can loop through the posts (Pages, in this example) for which our custom field is empty and update the field for each.

Step 1

Edit your field group.

This is a BricksLabs Pro tutorial.

For full access login below or create your BricksLabs Pro account

Get access to all 610 Bricks code tutorials with BricksLabs Pro

Related Tutorials..

Pro
Programmatically populating ACF field values in WordPress

Programmatically populating ACF field values in WordPress

An example of how to set the values of a Select-type field with the names and labels of all public post types.
Categories:
How to create filters with IsotopeJS in Bricks (Part 3): apply multiple filters

How to create filters with IsotopeJS in Bricks (Part 3): apply multiple filters

This tutorial will review how to apply multiple filters to an isotope container using the IsotopeJS library‘s features in Bricks.
Pro
ACF Flexible Content Field – Layout Labels and Sub Field Labels

ACF Flexible Content Field – Layout Labels and Sub Field Labels

How to output the text of layout labels and/or sub field labels using the Flexible Content field of ACF Pro.
Categories:
Pro
Filtering ACF Repeater Bricks Query Loop by Sub Field Value

Filtering ACF Repeater Bricks Query Loop by Sub Field Value

We look into how ACF Repeater rows output by a Bricks query loop can be filtered using the bricks/query/run PHP filter.
Categories:
Pro
Featured Image’s Meta in a Bricks Posts Query Loop

Featured Image’s Meta in a Bricks Posts Query Loop

How to output values of custom fields for the featured image of current post in a query loop
Categories:
Tags:
Pro
Merging ACF Gallery Images with Featured Image in Bricks

Merging ACF Gallery Images with Featured Image in Bricks

Updated on 12 Mar 2025 In the Bricks Facebook group a user asks: Merging images from different fields into a single gallery Hi, I have…
Categories: