Shortcodes in Widgets
I had occasion the other day to run a shortcode inside of a text widget. You know shortcodes… we talk about them all the time. They are keywords in [square_brackets] that do something special.
Sometimes they do something really simple like return a string (so you can have a global location to customize some string of text, for example), or they do something more complicated like call a plugin that does something fancy like build a photo gallery.
But alas…
This ain’t gonna work “out-of-the-box”After tinkering with some far-too-complicated solutions, someone on Twitter helped me with a deliciously simple solution: Just add this to your theme’s functions.php file:
add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');This will ensure that the text content of widgets is parsed for shortcodes and those shortcodes are ran. Awesome.
Stephanie Leary wrote a great article on Using Shortcodes Everywhere, which covers this as well as using shortcodes in a bunch of other places: Comments, templates, excerpts, etc.
About the author
Chris Coyier is a real-world web designer who has been reaching for WordPress to power client sites for many years. He subscribes to the theory that not only is WordPress capable of powering any website it is almost always the right choice. His other projects include CodePen and Quotes on Design.
5 responses
-
I use this for Members only content. I use a
[member][/member]code for content that is only for members and sometimes along side use a[visitor]code too. -
JasonOne line solutions are my favorite kind of solutions.
-
StephanieWow, if I had known this while doing my last WordPress project, it would have made my life so much easier. Unfortunately for deadline restrictions, I didn’t have time to thoroughly research it.
Thanks for sharing!
-
Gary CameronThis makes my life a lot easier. I wonder why WordPress would filter out shortcodes for use in widgets.
-
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! You saved me hours of work with this. Seriously. Much appreciated!
