How to Keep the Custom Fields Area Uncluttered When Using WordPress Meta Boxes

I wanted to touch on this tip a little more, as I might have briefly skimmed over it on my previous post: How to Create a Custom WordPress UI (Post Meta Box).

As you begin to build custom UI elements (meta box elements) for your WordPress themes and/or plugins; you may find it useful to hide certain meta data variable names so that they do not appear in the Custom Fields area (these are the values that get stored in the wp_postmeta database table).

There is no point in allowing the user to edit a piece of meta data in both your custom UI and also in the Custom Fields section (IMHO, i think it adds to the clutter and may cause confusion).

Blah, Blah, Blah … Just Tell Me How

Hiding post meta data from the custom fields section is pretty straight forward: by using an underscore to prefix the variable names, WordPress will hide it from appearing in the Custom Fields area.

The bellow is code excerpt from: How to Create a Custom WordPress UI (Post Meta Box), it might be a good idea to view it in full context.

function my_meta_save($post_id) 
{
	// ... code excerpt, see the rest of the code at: 
	// http://farinspace.com/how-to-create-custom-wordpress-meta-box/

	if ($data) update_post_meta($post_id, '_my_meta', $new_data);
	else add_post_meta($post_id, '_my_meta', $new_data, TRUE);
}