WordPress Code Snippets Tutorial

Often when you try and solve a problem with WordPress, you’ll come across sites giving you snippets of code to insert into your website. But if you’re new to the platform, you’ll have no idea where to paste this code. This quick WordPress code snippets tutorial will show you the right way to insert it.

Method 1: Paste into functions.php (Not preferred)

The most common answer you’ll find on the web is to paste the snippets into a file called “functions.php”. Since this advice is so common, I’ll show you how it’s done with some screenshots. But I think this method is seriously flawed for more than one reason. First, it goes like this.

Step 1: Open functions.php

Open up your WordPress administration dashboard and go to “Appearance -> Editor” on the left hand bar like this:

This brings up a page that allows you to edit your theme files which are all listed on the right hand side. Search for the one labeled “functions.php” and click on it.

Step 2: Delete closing ?> tag at the end

Once functions.php is open in the big textarea to the left, scroll all the way down. Check if you see the following symbol:

?>

If you do, delete it.

This is because it’s the closing symbol for the opening <?php tag at the very beginning. But it’s dangerous because you can accidentally leave a whitespace or a new line after it, throwing an error. And it’s very difficult to debug – especially since your entire site might crash. So remove the dangerous “?>” symbol

Step 3: Paste code at the end of functions.php

Finally, paste your code at the very bottom of functions.php and save it. You’re done! That’s the accepted way to insert snippets of code into WordPress.

Problems with Method 1

I mentioned earlier, that this is a terrible way to insert WordPress code snippets. Here’s why.

Should create a child theme

When you modify functions.php like this, you’re changing your theme files. There’s nothing wrong with this. But it’s short sighted because if your theme updates itself automatically or manually, all your custom changes will be overwritten. So even though adding custom WordPress code snippets your main theme’s functions.php will work, it’s not sustainable.

The standard recommendation is to create a child theme. I’ve written a tutorial on how to do this, so you can follow that if you want. The only change is that you’ll also need to add a functions.php file to your child theme. But it’s still quite a bit of work.

Errors in functions.php will crash your site

WordPress has a dreaded error called “The White Screen of Death”. This is when your site crashes and you see just a blank page. No errors, no warnings, and no hint of what went wrong. It’s terrifying because you may not even be able to access your site’s backed to fix whatever you just changed. You’ll need to use something like FTP to revert the changes, and if you don’t have FTP setup, and/or you don’t know how or where to access your WordPress files, your site will be down for a long time.

The white screen of death can be caused by an error in your theme files. Including functions.php. So if you accidentally make a mistake while pasting your code, or the person who wrote the code made a syntax error, you’re screwed. Sometimes while copy/pasting, we can easily miss a few characters at the beginning or end and this will almost certainly cause your site to crash.

For these two reasons above, I almost never paste code into functions.php. So I use my preferred solution.

A Custom Plugin for WordPress Code Snippets (Preferred)

Instead of pasting into my theme’s functions.php, I use a custom plugin. Here’s a tutorial on how to create a custom plugin. It’s much easier than creating a child theme. And best of all, when WordPress finds an error in your custom plugin, it will simply deactivate it with an informative error message. Your site won’t crash. No white screen of death!

Once your custom plugin is created, simply add the code below as shown here:

Occasionally, I’ve been forced to use functions.php when I have to override a built in theme function. But other than that, all my WordPres code snippets are housed in a custom plugin. I hope this tutorial was useful and showed you not only how to use the valuable code snippets you find everywhere, but the right way to insert them as well!