Regularly updating the homepage brings fresh content and helps impress website visitors easier. However, it may take time and effort to change its content. You definitely can avoid it with the help of custom fields created with Meta Box and MB Views. Let’s say goodbye to the hassle of coding in theme's files!

I’ve just made a simple page with a carousel for the demo like this. Whenever I want to change the images, texts, and buttons but keep the layout, I just update content in the custom field, then the homepage’s content also change following without touching to the code.

The demo of a homepage with a carousel.

Video Version

Before Getting Started

As I said, we will change content in custom fields, then the homepage content will be changed as well. It means that we must create custom fields corresponding to every content on your homepage. Each element will have its own custom field.

For instance, each slider in my carousel contains some information such as the image, title, description, and button. Instead of adding those contents directly into the code, I will create custom fields for each one of them. Then, just get values from those fields to display the content.

These are some tools we need for this practice:

First, we need the Meta Box framework. It’s available on wordpress.org. We also need some advanced features from some extensions of Meta Box. You can download them individually or use Meta Box AIO to have them all.

  • MB Views: to have a template for the page and get content from the custom fields to display on the homepage instead of touching any theme files or accessing the server or host;
  • Meta Box Builder: provides a UI to create custom fields to save the content of the homepage.

Finally, I’ll use a pre-built template from Bootstrap. In the event that you are using your own template, you can also follow this practice.

Create the Homepage

Go to Pages > Add New to create a new page as usual.

Create a new page

Then, go to the Settings menu > Reading to set the created page as the homepage.

Set the created page as the homepage.

Create Template for the Homepage

Instead of adding code to the theme files, you can use MB Views to create a template. Go to Meta Box > Views and add a new one.

Create a new template for the homepage

As mentioned before, I will use a pre-build template from Bootstrap, so just go to Bootstrap and download the template.

Download the template from Bootstrap.

Open the downloaded file, look for the folder of the template you want, copy all the code or a part, then paste it to the Template tab on the view. Note: In the event that you build the template yourselves, add code to the box as well.

Paste all the code or a part to the Template tab on the view.

You can see that the underlined information in the image below is the content displayed on the page.

The content displayed on the page following the Bootstrap's template

You can also add CSS and JS code to the CSS tab and JavaScript tab of the view for styling.

Add CSS and JS code to the CSS tab and JavaScript tab of the view for styling.

Finally, scroll down to set the location for this template to apply it to the homepage.

Set the location for the template

For using Bootstrap template, you should add some lines of code to the theme’s file to declare the online libraries of CSS and JS from Bootstrap.

Add code to the theme’s file to declare the online library of CSS from Bootstrap.

Add code to the theme’s file to declare the online library of JS from Bootstrap.

This’s how the carousel is on my homepage on the frontend right now.

The carousel is on my homepage on the frontend

The content is now static. Whenever you want to change it, you should go to the view editor and change the text in code. To make it dynamic, let’s move on to the next step.

Create Custom Fields

We should create custom fields corresponding to the content that we want to have on the page. Since I created only the carousel, for example, I'll have a group field for it like this.

A group field saves the homepage information.

Each slider has its own information with the same structure, so I’ll create subfields inside the group for each kind of information, then make this group cloneable.

Make the group cloneable

Let’s create them.

Go to Meta Box and create a group field, and then add some subfields inside the group.

Add some subfields inside the group

Back to the settings of the group, remember to set the group to be cloneable. It will help us add more sliders.

Set the group to be cloneable

That’s all the custom fields that I’m using for this practice. In the real case, you may want to have more content on the homepage, so just add as many fields as you want.

After creating fields, move to the Settings tabs, choose Location as Post type, and select Page. Since these fields will be applied to the homepage, go to the Advanced location rules options > Post and select the name of the homepage.

Set up the display of the created fields for the homepage

Now, on the homepage editor, you will see the fields. Whenever you click the Add more button, you create a new slider for the carousel.

On the homepage editor, you will see the fields.

Customize the Template

Go back to edit the template with MB Views.

My carousel now has 3 slides with the same structure of content. So, I have three parts of the code that are quite the same.

Three parts of the code correspond to 3 sliders

When using custom fields, we will use loops to get all the content from the sliders since we save it in a cloneable group. Therefore, just keep the first part and remove the second and third parts.

Keep the first part and remove the second and third parts

Next, just insert fields from the list on the right sidebar to get and display data from those fields. Click on the name of the created cloneable group, and a loop will be generated. Then, move the code of the slide inside the loop.

Create loop and move the code of the slide inside the loop

Now, replace content of each element with the corresponding field.

Replace content with the image save in the Single Image field
Replace content with the image save in the Single Image field
Replace the text by inserting data from the corresponding field
Replace the text by inserting data from the corresponding field

We should edit the div tag a little bit.

Edit the div tag a little bit

In there:

  • {% if loop.first %}active{% endif %}: to check if it is the first slider or not. This is to activate the style that we will apply to the slider.
  • {% if loop.first %}text-start{% endif %} {% if loop.last %}text-end{% endif %}: This code is to check the first slider.

Here is the full code after I modified it:

<div id="myCarousel" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="carousel">
    <div class="carousel-indicators">
        <button type="button" data-bs-target="#myCarousel" data-bs-slide-to="0" class="active" aria-current="true" aria-label="Slide 1"></button>
        <button type="button" data-bs-target="#myCarousel" data-bs-slide-to="1" aria-label="Slide 2"></button>
        <button type="button" data-bs-target="#myCarousel" data-bs-slide-to="2" aria-label="Slide 3"></button>
    </div>
    <div class="carousel-inner">
        {% for clone in post.homepage_fields %}
        <div class="carousel-item {% if loop.first %}active{% endif %}">
            <img src="{{ clone.single_image.full.url }}" width="{{ clone.single_image.full.width }}" height="{{ clone.single_image.full.height }}" alt="{{ clone.single_image.full.alt }}">
            <div class="container">
                <div class="carousel-caption {% if loop.first %}text-start{% endif %} {% if loop.last %}text-end{% endif %}">
                    <h1>{{ clone.title }}</h1>
                    <p>{{ clone.description }}</p>
                    <p><a class="btn btn-lg btn-primary" href="{{ clone.button_link }}">{{ clone.button_text }}</a></p>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
        {% endfor %}
    </div>
    <button class="carousel-control-prev" type="button" data-bs-target="#myCarousel" data-bs-slide="prev">
        <span class="carousel-control-prev-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span>
        <span class="visually-hidden">Previous</span>
    </button>
    <button class="carousel-control-next" type="button" data-bs-target="#myCarousel" data-bs-slide="next">
        <span class="carousel-control-next-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span>
        <span class="visually-hidden">Next</span>
    </button>
  </div>

To style the carousel a little bit more, you can add some CSS.

Add CSS to style the carousel a little bit more

Now, go to the homepage, you will see the content has been changed to the ones that are saved in the custom fields.

The content has been changed to the ones that are saved in the custom fields

From now on, whenever you want to change it, just go to the page in the backend, change the information.

To change content of the homepage, change the information in the page editor.

There is no need to touch the code anymore. And the content on the homepage will be replaced with new ones.

The content on the homepage will be replaced with new ones

Last Words

In the case that you are using a page builder to build your page, you also can use custom fields created with Meta Box for dynamic content. That will help a lot to save time and effort to change the content. Those cases or configuring the homepage using MB Views in this practice are much like creating landing pages using Meta Box. You can refer to it and give it a try. Thank you for reading!

2 thoughts on “Configure Homepage Using MB Views

  1. Hello. how are they? I want to congratulate them for such an extraordinary plugin and so valuable and useful for those who want to make our ideas - I have a concern or question that arises because of the need I have to create landing pages that can be customized by users as long as users as long as They are given a predesigned template. And if I can, as you explain in this article, not just create a Home page, but many pages and that these can be shown as landing pages of different reasons, at the same time? I was telling your article how to create the landing page in the https://metabox.io/create-lating-pages-in-wordpress/ but I see that here it is only limited to be able to perform a single landing page. I would like to know, if possible, in which part or parts of the code should be taken into account to create several pages of landings with different templates of different reasons following this same tutorial? that is to say or clarify: When you take an HTML template and develop the process, the idea is to take one to one other templates and do the same procedure for each HTML template and achieve several functional pays, but and here is where my question goes , how to do so that all of them can coexist without affecting each other, especially the part where it is necessary to add code to the ttheme in the php files? Is this possible or by this method only serves customize a single landing page?
    My project is aimed at a multisitarian wordpress that allows users to have and customize different rangepoints of landing pages, for example, one of each nutritional product, with their personal data, for example, but that is not one. is this possible? They could make a blog article as a continuation of this same article https://metabox.io/create-Leing-Pages-in-Wordpress/ But where they explain, if possible, make several landing pages for this same method, and that Do not affect one of another? I would greatly appreciate the help about this solution.
    Or if they have another possible solution, be able to share it by some means?
    It occurs to me that it could be done with the elementor plugin or another pages constructor, and somehow be able to insert the custom fields created with Metabox in them, but I have not seen tutorials for this. I would like to know if they have one for it. Stay tuned to your comments. Atte. Rodolfo Seales http://sistemaspa.com and http://sistemaspa.co

  2. How to configurate vscode and wp instance to be able to use mb views inside editor? This workflow might would have been the best way to WordPress 🙂

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