WordPress Shortcode

Last Updated:July 30, 2021

Why do you need Shortcode?

Running PHP code inside content is not allowed instead you can use the WP Shortcode.

How to create Shortcode

You can register add_shortcode() in your function.php the file of your theme. That is the easiest way to create a shortcode.

You can add the following code to function.php file of your theme.

add_shortcode( 'helloworld_shortcode', 'fn_helloworld_shortcode' );
function fn_helloworld_shortcode() {
    return 'Hello World';
}

This is the very basic shortcode you can create in WorldPress

  • add_shortcode() function is used to register the shortcode
  • You can see two arguments in the add_shortcode() is the name of the source code and you can use [helloworld_shortcode] in your editor to call the shortcode function.

This is not the best practice to make the shortcode ( We put the code inside function.php).

Creating a plugin and put this code inside it, is the best practice.

Shortcode with content and attributes

Shortcode can accept parameters that are called attributes.

This is a shortcode with content and attributes

[tc_quote author="Brian Dean"]SEO isn’t about content creation. It’s about content promotion [/tc_quote]

You can put the content inside the square bracket.

How can you access content and attributes inside the function?. It is very simple. You can use the function shortcode_atts()

Complete code to access attribute and content

add_shortcode( 'tc_quote', 'fn_tc_quote' );

function fn_tc_quote($attributes, $content = null) {
    
    return "<div >".$content."</div><div> <b>".$attributes['author']."</b> </div>";
    
}

These are the two shotcodes I have developed for this site to display quotes and related posts

Quote Shortcode

SEO isn’t about content creation. It’s about content promotion
Brian Dean backlinko.com

Related Posts Shortcode

Further Reading