After weeks of close and close, torque magazine Announcing this year’s winner plugin madness competition. Advanced custom fields (ACF) won the crown, earning the votes to secure first place in the 2023 bracket.
ACF allows developers to create and manage custom fields across their WordPress site to display information such as scoring systems, pricing, event times, product variants, and more. This is a huge advantage for developers who often work with repetitive types of metadata that they want to display throughout their site.
![Image of the ACF plugin in action on a WordPress site](https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/acf-internal-1024x821.jpeg)
edging out Woo Commerce (2nd place) and Manage WP Workers (3rd place) took the top spot. This is his second Plugin Madness victory for ACF. 1st place in 2016 During the first Plugin Madness contest.
With this win, ACF is elevated to the list of illustrious plugins that have won the competition multiple times. Elementor (2019 and 2020 winners) and smash image optimizer (2017 and 2018 winners).
Now in its eighth year, Plugin Madness is an annual bracket-style contest that pits the 64 most popular WordPress plugins against each other until there is only one winner. The starting seeds are divided into his four categories of marketing, optimization, maintenance and e-commerce, and voters choose their favorites as he narrows down the competition over six weeks.
To be nominated, all tournament plugins must be available for free. Plugin repository, is compatible with WordPress versions 5.7 and higher, and has been updated during the last year. All of the first 64 are responsible for helping developers and designers better customize, optimize, manage, and maintain their WordPress sites.
“One of the greatest benefits of using WordPress is the community of developers who actively participate in improving the ecosystem for all users. Plugin Madness collects feedback and helps the community use It’s a great way to see what tools you’re working with,” said the editor of Torque magazine. Emily Schiola.
“This is a fun and interactive way to not only improve new plugins and support established fan favorites, but also show some love to the designers and developers who create these prominent plugins. ”
If your favorite plugin wasn’t in the 2023 bracket, nominate it for Plugin Madness next year and make your voice heard! Get ready for next year’s nominations.