The Easiest Way to Add Custom Code to WordPress

WordPress has a well-deserved reputation as a user-friendly and customizable content management system. If you don’t mind researching the right type of plugin or investing in a premium WordPress theme, this CMS will let you do amazing things.

WordPress is the fixer’s dream. If you’re interested in customizing your website, learning how to add custom code to WordPress should be on your to-do list. In this article, we will show you:

Why Do You Want to Add Custom Code to WordPress?

You will often read how plugins are the best options for extending the functionality of your WordPress website or changing the way it looks and behaves. And that’s right – plugins are what make WordPress so great, thanks to their variety and ease of use.

In some cases, you will not find a WordPress plugin that does exactly what you want it to do.. Or if you’re just trying to build a website on an extremely low budget, you can find a premium plugin that’s a real bummer. Even the best WordPress page builders will have blind spots that you need to fix by entering some custom code.

And let’s not forget how easy it is to get started with code. There are many resources to get you started. Even the articles you’ll find online will teach you how to do simple tweaks by simply adding a line or two of code to your website. The question should not be why you would want to add custom code to WordPress. It should be, why not?

What Problems Can You Face While Adding Custom Code?

There are several reasons why adding custom code to your WordPress website is not as bad an idea as it is a potential source of problems for you and your website. This is because of the file you will add the code to most often – function.php.

Let’s forget for a moment that making a mistake while editing this file can crash your website, and it certainly can. To ensure that your changes are permanent even after updating your WordPress theme, you must first create a child theme and edit the functions.php file. It’s a hassle that many would want to do without.

But even if you go to the trouble of creating a child theme so you can use it to add custom code to your WordPress website, this will not be the end of your problems. Some code snippets tend to be short. Others tend to be tall. The more comfortable you are with coding, the more you will explore topics like adding custom JavaScript or custom CSS. You’ll soon come across a hard-to-navigate file.

How to Easily Add Custom Code to WordPress

An easy way to get around most of the problems of manually adding code to WordPress is to use a plugin for it. code snippets It is a popular WordPress plugin with over 300,000 active installs that allows you to easily add and manage code.

To get the plugin go to your website backend and Plugins > Add New. There, search for Code Snippets and install and activate the plugin.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, it will create a new submenu called “Snippets” in your dashboard. There you will be able to find all the functionality of the plugin. If you want to check the plugin’s options first, you’ll find it divided into General, Description Editor, and Code Editor.

In the General section you can change whether you want to activate the snippet automatically when you save it, and enable things like snippet descriptions, tags, scope selector. You will also have the option to disable the shortcode syntax highlighter and set a complete removal.

Under Comment Editor options you will be able to choose the line height of the comment.and also choose if you want to use full editor and enable media buttons.

The Code Editor options allow you to choose the theme you want the editor to appear in, enable the use of fixed tabs for indentations, and set a tab size and unit of ID. You’ll also have the ability to toggle between scrolling lines, line numbers, auto-close braces, and highlighting selection matches.

The All Snippets window lists all your snippets with their descriptions, tags, modified date, and priority. In this window, you will be able to turn snippets on or off.. Before you even add your first snippet, it will come in handy as it contains a few code examples you can use.

The Add New window is where the real fun happens. First, you can give your snippet a name before entering the code and choosing where you want the snippet to run. You will also be able to set the priority for the snippet.

Then you will be able to add the description. You will have the option to add media in it and edit the description in the text editor as well as the image. Finally, you will be able to set tags for your code snippet.

After you create the snippet, you save and activate or save it. Either way, if you haven’t made any mistakes in the code, you’ll be free to go to the All Snippets window and see your new widget.

And that’s it! When you see the snippet has been modified, you have successfully added and opened it. If you want to download the snippet as a .php file or export it as a .json file, you can click the Edit button below your snippet and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the appropriate options.

The plugin also allows you to import snippets from .xml or .json files from the Import option in the Snippets submenu. It makes it easy to move snippets from one website to another.

Solution

The ability to add code to your WordPress website can help you fine-tune your website with everything from extensive changes to minor tweaks. However, in addition to knowing how to code and being reasonably confident that your contributions won’t break the site, you can also use a simple way to add and manage your snippets. And that’s exactly what the plugin is built to do.