Removing numerous Meta boxes from numerous CPTs

Question

Hi I am building multiple sites for my work. All sites will take advantage of CPTs and Custom Taxonomies. Registered taxonomies will be handled using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. Therefore, I would like to remove all taxonomy meta boxes from all potential sites. I know I can do this via the following:

function my_remove_meta_boxes() {
        remove_meta_box( 'tax-1div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
        remove_meta_box( 'tax-2div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
        remove_meta_box( 'tax-3div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
        remove_meta_box( 'tax-4div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
        remove_meta_box( 'tax-5div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
}
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'my_remove_meta_boxes' );

But this would only remove said meta boxes from defined CPT-1 and not all potential CPT combinations. To remove from all potential CPTs I would have to do this:

    function my_remove_meta_boxes() {
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-1div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-2div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-3div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-4div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-5div', 'CPT-1', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-1div', 'CPT-2', 'side' );             
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-2div', 'CPT-2', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-3div', 'CPT-2', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-4div', 'CPT-2', 'side' );
                remove_meta_box( 'tax-5div', 'CPT-2', 'side' );
        }
        add_action( 'admin_menu', 'my_remove_meta_boxes' );

Is there a more efficient way to do this other than by de-registering all meta boxes for all CPTs?

Answer 1

ACF is a great plugin that very well may have these as options, but you might consider registering the custom taxonomies in your theme or plugin the WordPress way.

If it's an option for you, you'd have a lot of flexibility to do a couple of things.

1. You can register 1 taxonomy for multiple post types
2. You can choose to hide the UI, that way you don't have to hide it later.

Here's a simple example modified from the codex for our purposes here:

add_action( 'init', 'create_wpse_tax' );

function create_wpse_tax() {
    register_taxonomy(
        'custom_tax',
        array('cpt_1','cpt_2','cpt_3'), // <- multiple post types in an array here.
        array(
            'label' => __( 'Custom Tax' ),
            'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'custom-tax' ),
            'hierarchical' => true,
            'show_ui' => false, // <- don't show the UI
            'hide_meta_box' => true // **EDIT** - don't show the meta box
        )
    );
}

EDIT: I just found another parameter that's not in the codex called hide_meta_box. This may be more like what you're looking for rather than completely hiding the UI. See edit in the code block above.