It surprises me how many WordPress Theme Developers I speak to that haven't heard of the ACF Local JSON
ACF Local JSON is one of my favourite features of Advanced Custom Fields. It was a feature added in version 5 that allows you to save your field group settings to a JSON file within your project.
It’s really easy to get started, just create a directory in your theme called acf-json. The next time you save a field group a JSON file should be automatically created and saved to that directory for you.
This feature is awesome because the field groups are saved as JSON files they can be easily included in the projects git repo, therefore it’s easy to deploy these field group changes along with your theme changes. There’s no need to push or pull databases (which avoids a lot of complexity and potential issues).
If you’d like you can easily customise the location these JSON files are saved to or loaded from. If someone on your team edits these files you can easily sync the field group changes to keep your local site up to date!
If you’re working in a team I suggest you read Ben’s guide on How to avoid conflicts when using the ACF Local JSON feature.
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