NPC Manual Generator for Advanced Custom Fields

When you hand off a WordPress site to a client, they often ask « where do I edit what? ». NPC Manual Generator for Advanced Custom Fields parses the field structures defined by Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and produces an update manual that operations staff can actually read – in Markdown and PDF.

Designed for real-world handoff use, the plugin renders Repeater / Flexible Content / Group nesting, translates ACF location rules into readable text, and bundles a Japanese-capable font for PDF output, so the result is something you can ship as a deliverable.

Main features

• Read ACF local JSON (acf-json/group_xxx.json) and field groups stored in the database
• Indented rendering for nested fields (Repeater / Flexible Content / Group)
• Formatted output of field type, required flag, instructions, choices, and more
• Location rule humanization (post type, taxonomy, page templates; resolves page/post titles when reading from the database)
• Live preview in the admin screen
• Markdown download (single file and Zip bundle)
• PDF download (single file – A4 portrait, IPAex Gothic bundled, header / footer / page numbers)
• Bulk Zip download with format selection (MD / PDF / Both)
• Paired filename rename when bundling so that the MD and PDF for the same group share the same suffix

Translation

All UI strings are wrapped with __() / _e() and the text domain npc-manual-generator-for-advanced-custom-fields. A Japanese translation is bundled (languages/npc-manual-generator-for-advanced-custom-fields-ja.po). Additional languages can be contributed through translate.wordpress.org.

Roadmap

• Template feature (rebrand the manual with your studio’s logo and colors)
• Inline display in the post editor sidebar
• Sample value capture (pull one real post and show « currently entered as … »)
• Diff manuals (highlight changes since the previous output)
• Automatic screenshot insertion (capture the admin screen with a headless browser and embed in the PDF)

Links

• Official site: https://n-pc.jp/
• Developer blog: https://n-pc.jp/blog/

Author

npc – Freelance WordPress developer working with ACF since 2016. This plugin grew from in-house tools used to ship real client projects.

Third-party Licenses

This plugin bundles the following third-party software.

• mPDF (mpdf/mpdf 8.x): GPL-2.0-only. See vendor/mpdf/mpdf/LICENSE.txt.
• IPAex Gothic Font (fonts/ipaexg.ttf): IPA Font License Agreement v1.0. See fonts/IPA_Font_License_Agreement_v1.0.txt. Official: https://moji.or.jp/ipafont/license/

The mPDF dependencies are also bundled (all under compatible licenses):

• setasign/fpdi – MIT
• psr/log – MIT
• psr/http-message – MIT
• paragonie/random_compat – MIT
• myclabs/deep-copy – MIT
• mpdf/psr-log-aware-trait – GPL-2.0-only
• mpdf/psr-http-message-shim – GPL-2.0-only