Redmine

Hello, We are finding that the number of custom fields that we are managing is becoming overwhelming so I have a technical/development question.

Is it better to just put up with the fact that we're going to have many custom fields or..

Would it be better (or is it even possible) to create a plugin that contains a bunch of fields that can extend an issue?

We still need to be able to list, filter, search, etc but I suppose that it's possible to hook plugin fields into the standard views. Or is it?

We're new to RoR but learning fast.

Opinions? Advice?

Thanks for the help.
Chris