ACF Pro or Jet Engine - Which One Is Right For You?

so today I'm going to be covering a topic that I've tried to stay away from for quite some time because it's such a subjective topic and that is a CF or jet engine which is the right one for me simple answer there is no right one for you it all comes down to the way that you'd learn the way that you implement things and the job you may have at hand so once we get that out the way I'm gonna give you some pros and cons of each of those so you can make a more informed decision then it's entirely up to you which way you go so without further ado let's start off with the first point now I've got some notes for the side of me so I will be going back over to these notes as we go through this video but hopefully I can say by the end of it you'll have a clearer understanding of some of the pros and cons of each of these different tools now first of all the learning curve something you have to be aware of is whichever of these tools you choose there's going to be quite a steep learning curve yes the basics are fairly simple and straightforward to get your head around and once you understand how dynamic content works within the confines of a tool like elemental it's fairly straightforward however that is the basics once you get beyond the basics you'll realize there are a ton of really complex subjects in which you can tap into to create much more complex websites now cover quite a few different topics like this in the deep dive videos that are put together over the last so a six or eight months and I'll put links in the description below for all those different tutorials so you can take a look at the jet engine deep dives and the ACF pro team dives then you can take a little look and see how some of these things are done but just bearing in mind that there is a learning curve now with our learning curve what will make it easier is good quality training material documentation and help and support and this is where there's quite a divide between the two different products let's start off with a CF and let me just make this caveat there right now I'm talking about a CF when it comes down to working within a visual environment like elemental pro like beaver builder like Brizzy like Gutenberg I'm not talking about whether you want a hand code things if you are into hand coding then obviously jet engine is not going to be for you because it's all set up to work within either elemental Pro or inside so just bearing that in mind I don't take out all that hand coding side of things and we're going to put that by the by that's a completely different topic and one for its own dedicated video so training the materials that are available by Crocker Bob will start with Krakow blog because obviously this is all geared towards working with a tool like elemental the Krakow block training material while there's a lot of it and the same goes with the documentation it's not in my opinion that well formatted and structured there's way too much information being assumed in these training videos so you don't really get a good understanding of what's being put together because a lot of the key core fundamentals are being glossed over and not being covered without those there's just too much confusion going on in there so if you rely on upon training material you are going to rely upon third parties people like myself that have looked at it in a more logical fashion hopefully and created something that at least gives you the core skills and the core knowledge that you need to get the most out of tools like jet engine when it comes to ACF that's a completely different thing because most of the training out there is going to be covering it from a hand coding point of view so being comfortable jumping into the core files of WordPress jumping into the theme files and adding in your own code and then styling it through CSS and so on so you are not going to have an abundance of information whichever these options you choose you are gonna have to pick and choose and find out resources that will give you good quality training and information to go back to jet engine there are some of the key fundamentals in there use short codes and so on inside some of the more advanced panels these are covered to a small extent in the documentation but they're quite hard to find and not that well explained so again you are kind of on your own you do have the jet or you do have the croco block Facebook group which is a good place and they do give great support there so you could do have that however it can lead to frustration if you're trying to create something and you just don't know where to find that information and you just any real help for the documentation of the training material so bear in mind which ever one you choose you are gonna have to invest time and effort into learning it sifting through training courses training material YouTube videos documentation and help to get the results you may be looking for so just bail I mean this is not a simple couple of clicks and you've got a fully dynamic website time is gonna be hard to be invested in learning to get the most out of these now one other thing that's worth bearing in mind is we're not really comparing on apples to apples comparison when we look in an advanced custom fields Pro and jet engine the reason I say that is advanced custom field Pro does one job it creates meta fields and it can link those through to posts pages and so on media files and things inside WordPress itself if you want to go beyond that you have to look at third-party tools or you have to hand code a few bits and pieces like custom post types and so on this is something that separates these two plugins quite widely as a big divide between them like I say ACF just creates meta fields whereas jet engine is more of a suite of tools wrapped up all around creating meta fields so you can create your meta fields in a similar fashion to what you can do with advanced custom fields Pro we've also create custom post types custom listing layers custom forms whole range of different things all part of jet engine and for the price you pay for jet engine a single license I think is something about 14 dollars that's a lot of power for a very small amount of money but like I say with that comes quite a steep learning curve on the other hand when you look at a CF Pro if you want to get all those functions there are tools out there and most of these are free tools so if you want to get custom post types giving you see ptui completely free if you want to create custom listings and you're working with elemental you can use any custom skin completely free so there are a lot of different things you can tap into to match up with the amount of control and features you have as part of jet engine but bearing in mind they are separate third part plugins that have their own support mechanisms there could be incompatibilities further under the line as different things are updated whereas jet engine is one platform or for the same developers so this is a positive for jet engine and a little bit of a negative if you want to get into more complex setups using custom post types and all those kinds of things so bear that in mind however like I say there are ton of tools that are available and I've covered most of these in both deep dive videos and in their own dedicated videos which again will be part of the playlists you'll see in the description so if you want to check those out and see what can be done I'd recommend taking a look at those now when it comes to a CF Pro compared to jet engine and the meta field side of things a CF Pro has more meta fields available to you so there are more fields available you can tap into into your design plus a CF Pro is very extensible in other words there are a lot of third-party add-ons that will expand what you can do inside the core functionality of a CF takeaway the custom post types all those kinds of things if you want for example to add in a meta field type for 4005 there's a plug-in that'll do exactly that and give you access to that so there's a lot of extra tools you can tap into that will expand the larger starting point that you have with a CF pro compared to jet engine however they may not be the kinds of things you even need in your project so take a look at what our on off off of a take a look if these are things that are vital to your projects and if they are invest your time in learning that one if they're not then you have access to both of these to choose which is the best one for you but like I say there are more meta fields available straight out of the box with a CF Pro that it is in jet engine however say on that the cost for a CF pro has gone up now so the cost of entry is going to be higher if you want a CF Pro now speaking of being extensible you can if you want to you can use a CF in conjunction with jet engine you don't have to use jet engine to create your meta fields you could use a CF pro for that and then you could tap into all the different tools you have available that's part of jet engine and then you can open up a ton of possibilities and cut down the plugins you want to use but there is a caveat to that while jet engine has a ton of built-in functionality that you can tap into visually inside elemental an elemental pro some of those things are still a little bit clunky and unwieldy they still require you to understand some HTML code CSS code short codes and things like that so for example repeat the regions repeater regions are something that are very very powerful and if you don't know how much data is going to be included in a particular post type these make the whole possibility of using that very easy and both of them jet engine on a CF Pro make setting those up a very simple affair however outputting them not so simple jet engine allows you to do this but it's not very easy to do you're still like I say need to get in and do some coding and so on which if you use tools like any where elemental pro or dynamic content for elemental to plugins that are like Swiss Army knives when it comes to dealing with dynamic content with ACF alongside Elementor they make the whole process painless you can create custom templates if you want to or you can simply use some of the predefined templates so within seconds you could have a basic layout set up whereas if you're using jet engine might take you a lot longer because you need to find the documentation that tells you how to set things up you need to learn how to set it up how to pull in the map the fields you want how to format things how to style things so just bearing in mind that there are some things that are just easier when you're using ACF and some third-party tools in comparison to what you do when you work in insight jet engine another good example of this is when it comes to working with relationships relationships are vital when you're dealing with database for example let's just say you have a real estate website and you've got a property for sale underneath that you might have a relationship through to the agent that's selling it on the flip side you could have an agent that has multiple properties so there are relationships set up between those two different custom post types creating them is pretty straightforward in ACF in all honesty it's very simple straightforward and then tapping into those tools like anywhere mentor pro or dynamic content for the elemental makes outputting this opening those relationships really really simple jet engine you can do it but it's not it's just not a simple it's just not as straightforward there seems to be more advanced knowledge assumed just to get those end results out there so to me ACF is a more mature product that makes a lot of these things considerably easier and linking those through to tools like anywhere elemental pro or dynamic content for elemental gives you a fantastic platform that will easily rival something like jet engine so take a look at that yes the cost of entry is a little more expensive but a lot of the time you can get unlimited plans for very very good value that you can use on multiple projects so that's a combination that me personally I've used in quite a few different projects and it's very very powerful so take a look at things like that before you make a decision these third-party tools could be a deal breaker now speaking with third-party tools this is another area where ACF excels there are tons of third-party tools that will work with it as just ACF but also in conjunction with some like Gooden Berg or dealing with you know elemental pro whereas the third-party support for jet engine is still a very very very minimal so have I give you a definitive answer to which is the right one for you where there should be a CF Pro or jet engine I very much doubt it but hopefully what this has done is it's giving you some things to look into so you can make a much more informed decision as I say at the top of the video take a look at those playlists that are in the description below for both advanced custom fields Pro and for jet engine so you can get an understanding of how these tools work in real world scenarios from the basics right the way of building a fully fledged website get yourself as much knowledge so you can make an informed decision for yourself all of the applicable links are down in the description below including those playlists now some of the links are affiliate links and if you choose to use those you help support the channel help me create more content for you moving forward cost you absolutely normal as always - reporters has been WP tats and until next time take care

Channel: WPTuts

Views: 16,165

Keywords: WPTuts, advanced custom fields pro wordpress, advanced custom fields pro plugin, advanced custom fields pro elementor, acf pro, acf, jetengine, jetengine plugin, jet engine wordpress, jet engine listing, jet engine or acf, elementor dynamic content

Id: B4fAyRiY-Tw

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020