Most Common Mistake to Pasting Snippets From The Web into WordPress Themes
Time to time, we share tutorials that involves users adding code snippets to their wordpress themes’s functions.php file.While this process is fairly easy for those who know how PHP works, it seems a bit tedious for new users. Often beginners want to accomplish the final result of the tutorial, but they lack the PHP knowledge to understand how to properly paste the code without breaking the site. There is nothing wrong with that, and if you are reading this article because you broke your site doing that, then we want to assure you that you are not the only one. All of us started at that point, and we have all made this mistake. In this article, we will show you how to avoid the most common mistakes while pasting PHP code from tutorials into your WordPress themes’s functions.php file.
Note: Theme’s functions.php file is located in /wp-content/themes/yourthemename/ folder. This is NOT the same as the core functions.php file located in the /wp-includes/ folder.
1st Most Common Mistake
User finds a code on the website that is wrapped around with PHP like the one below, and they paste it on a wrong spot.
<?php add_filter( 'login_headerurl', 'custom_loginlogo_url' ); function custom_loginlogo_url($url) { return 'https://mageewp.com'; } ?>
Example theme’s functions.php file code (Note usually theme’s functions.php file has a lot more code, but the idea is the same):
<?php //Tons of mumble jumble PHP code that already exists in your PHP file is here //User would copy and paste the snippet they found on the web like this: <?php add_filter( 'login_headerurl', 'custom_loginlogo_url' ); function custom_loginlogo_url($url) { return 'https://mageewp.com'; } ?> ?>
Now this will obviously freak WordPress out because you have a PHP tag opening without closing an existing PHP tag. There are two ways of going about and fixing this issue. The first method is that we paste the item on the right spot:
<?php //Tons of mumble jumble PHP code that already exists in your PHP file is here //See how we properly closed the first open PHP tag ?> //Now we can open the PHP tag. <?php add_filter( 'login_headerurl', 'custom_loginlogo_url' ); function custom_loginlogo_url($url) { return 'https://mageewp.com'; } ?>
Notice, how we properly pasted the PHP code after the previous one was closed.
Another method is to simply strip out the opening and closing tags from your new WordPress function. So the example would look like this:
<?php //Tons of mumble jumble PHP code that already exists in your PHP file is here // New code just goes here (Notice how we stripped out the opening and closing PHP tags from the new code) add_filter( 'login_headerurl', 'custom_loginlogo_url' ); function custom_loginlogo_url($url) { return 'https://mageewp.com'; } ?>
2nd Most Common Mistake
Each tutorial writer has their own style of writing. Some keep their snippets wrapped around with PHP tag which you saw in the example above. Other authors do not wrap their snippets around with PHP tags. This brings us to the second problem. If you have a code like this:
function custom_loginlogo() { echo '<style type="text/css"> h1 a {background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/login_logo.png) !important; } </style>'; } add_action('login_head', 'custom_loginlogo');
The author is assuming that you know that this code is supposed to go within the PHP tags. Some even suggest that you place their code at the bottom of your theme’s functions.php file. Example of a rookie mistake is:
<?php //Tons of mumble jumble PHP code that already exists in your PHP file is here ?> //Then the user paste the code here (Notice the PHP tags are already closed above): function custom_loginlogo() { echo '<style type="text/css"> h1 a {background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/login_logo.png) !important; } </style>'; } add_action('login_head', 'custom_loginlogo');
If you notice the user has pasted the code outside the PHP tags. WordPress doesn’t know what the code is, thus it break. A proper code would look like this:
<?php //Tons of mumble jumble PHP code that already exists in your PHP file is here //The new goes here function custom_loginlogo() { echo '<style type="text/css"> h1 a {background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/login_logo.png) !important; } </style>'; } add_action('login_head', 'custom_loginlogo'); //PHP End Tag ?>
3rd Most Common Mistake
Now that we have covered the opening and closing PHP tags issue, the last most common mistake that we see involves user pasting new snippets within an existing function.
Anatomy of a function usually looks like this:
function custom_function_name() { // This is the opening tag of a function // code specific to the function goes here } // This is the closing tag of a function
If you paste another function inside a function, then it will cause your site to break. Example of this mistake would be like:
function custom_function_name() { // This is the opening tag of a function // code specific to the function goes here function custom_loginlogo() { echo '<style type="text/css"> h1 a {background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/login_logo.png) !important; } </style>'; } add_action('login_head', 'custom_loginlogo'); } // This is the closing tag of a function
You cannot do this. Each functions are independent, so you cannot put the two together. Proper way of pasting would be like this:
function custom_function_name() { // This is the opening tag of a function // code specific to the function goes here } // This is the closing tag of a function function custom_loginlogo() { echo '<style type="text/css"> h1 a {background-image: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/login_logo.png) !important; } </style>'; } add_action('login_head', 'custom_loginlogo');
The above three mistakes is probably the reason why your theme broke when you copied and pasted a snippet from web into your WordPress themes’s functions.php
Other Common Mistakes
Use of undefined constant title
most likely you forgot to include the $ when referencing a variable.
parse error, unexpected ‘=’
most likely you forgot to include the $ when referencing a variable.
parse error, unexpected ‘)’
parse error, unexpected ‘(‘
most likely you forgot this parenthesis’ mate
parse error, unexpected T_STRING
this usually means you forgot a quotation mark; but it can also mean you forgot a semi-colon at the end of a previous line
parse error, unexpected T_ELSE
you have an else statement with no opening if
Conclusion
There are times when we ran into issues just to find out that the pasted code had errors. Some are really careless errors like the developer not putting ; or closing a quote. Whereas others were functional errors with the code itself or user not following the instructions properly.
