Hi! I made a first attempt to customize the backend of my client’s site using another approach I discovered, the “WPAlchemy PHP Class”. I’d set up my metabox and all of the required fields, checkboxes and dropdowns and was feeling pretty good… when I learned that search plugins would not work with my data!

Why? Because the way the custom fields were being written to the DB were as “serialized” data, i.e. all my custom keys/values were written into just two WP DB fields. (Specifically, in the wp_postmeta table, in “_custom_meta” and “_custom_checkbox_meta”.) And although it’s doable, WP apparently isn’t really optimized to work with or search this kind of data.

I’ve since discovered Piklist, and I’m hoping it will allow the use of a “more powerful WP search” plugin like Relevanssi.

I’m not a newbie (wrangling a little PHP and JavaScript doesn’t deter me) but am still very much on the coder learning curve (heck, I just learned what serialized data was two days ago!), so I’m hopeful that Piklist will allow me to do what I need… but before I start wrapping my head around it too deeply, I wanted to check on this point as it’s pretty important if the site is going to function as my client (and I) would like it to.

Piklist looks pretty awesome and I’m really excited to add it to my arsenal… so looking forward to your reply. Thanks!

Adam