Getting Started with Woody ad snippets
Woody ad snippets help you to execute PHP code, insert ad units or other external widget code anywhere in your WordPress website. Brief documentation gives an overview of all plugin features.
Installation
Brief description of different snippet types.
General Settings
Base Options
| Activate by Default | The optional feature. If “ON” then all newly created snippets are active by default. |
| Complete Uninstall | The optional feature. If “ON” then all data (snippets, settings) associated with the plugin will be removed after the plugin is uninstalled |
Code Editor
| Code style | The optional feature. You can customize the code style in the snippet editor. The “Default” style is applied by default. |
| Indent With Tabs | The optional feature. Whether, when indenting, the first N*tabSize spaces should be replaced by N tabs. The default is false. |
| Tab Size | The optional feature. Pressing Tab in the code editor increases left indent to N spaces. N is a number pre-defined by you. |
| Indent Unit | The optional feature. The indent for code lines (units). Example: select a snippet, press Tab. The left indent in the selected code increases to N spaces. N is a number pre-defined by you. |
| Wrap Lines | The optional feature. If “ON” the editor will wrap long lines. Otherwise, it will create a horizontal scroll. |
| Line Numbers | The optional feature. If “ON” all lines in the editor will be numbered. |
| Auto Close Brackets | The optional feature. If “ON” the editor will automatically close opened quotes or brackets. Sometimes, it speeds up coding. |
| Highlight Selection Matches | The optional feature. If “ON” it searches for matches for the selected variable/function name. Highlight matches with green. Improves readability. |
Creating Snippets
Snippets are short pieces of code or text that can be easily stored in WordPress admin bar and added to the page content. If you haven’t tried snippets yet, check out the benefits now:
- No code duplication (you no longer need to copy the code or text to several pages);
- Safety (no one except the admin can edit snippet’s content);
- Flexibility (you can place the code or text automatically using a special logic or entering shortcodes to the areas where the snippet is expected);
- Simple migration and website cleanup when you remove the plugin (you don’t need to go through all pages to remove code or a text snippet).
Let’s talk about snippet types, so you could choose the one you need.
Creating a PHP snippet
This is the easiest snippet type. It is used to execute PHP code only. If you want to execute any PHP code leaving your theme or the WordPress source code untouched then this is the type you need. Most users (perhaps, you are too!) still use function.php to place PHP code templates. That’s a bad idea with plenty of side effects. In fact, you get a messy function.php file and lose all changes with a regular theme update.
PHP snippets is a simple tool to modify, save and organize your PHP code in WordPress admin bar directly.
Setup
Let’s try to create your first PHP snippet.
Start with searching for a Woody snippets menu at the side menu.
Press +Add snippet.
You should see the following:
Select PHP Snippet as a snippet type and click Create item. The snippet settings will be opened.
Add a snippet title. Think of a logical name – this way it’ll be easier to find this snippet among others in the list.
Most of the screen is occupied by the code editor with syntax highlighter. This is a multifunctional editor suitable for the HTML code as well. However, it’s better to use it for the PHP code.
Attention! The editor is used for a PHP code. This means you should add a PHP code without opening or closing PHP tags. You add a PHP code only. And the editor calculates what code to expect.
Use Cases for “everywhere”
Example #1: Registration of the ‘init‘ hook
Use Cases for Shortcodes
Example #1: Show content to registered users only.
We’d like to hide a particular content from guests. This way we are motivating guests to sign up to our website. Let’s write a code that is going to solve this problem. The logic is pretty simple: if the is_user_logged_in” function exists & the user has signed in & any text has been sent to the $content variable, then we print the text from the $content variable (we’ll discuss how to add this text to a variable later).
Now we need to wrap this special content in special shortcodes. Default attributes are: snippet id and snippet title.
Shortcodes can be used inside text widgets, in classic WordPress editor, Gutenberg editor, plugins and themes with shortcode support.
Attention! The content you wrap between shortcodes will always be available in the snippet via the $content variable. You should modify this variable. Otherwise, the content between shortcodes will be cut from the page content.
Example #2: Different Contact Form 7 layouts depend on the need_support parameter in the URL.
It’s a very popular question on our tech support forum: how to use another plugin shortcode in the PHP snippet? Let’s write a simple code that is going to display a contact form depends on the URL parameter. If a user follows the link https://site.loc/support?need_support=premium we’d like to show a contact form for the premium support. If a user clicks https://site.loc/support?need_support=freewe display a free support contact form. We create a condition: if the need_support request variable exists and it is not empty, we show the form type from the variable value. Otherwise, show the default form.
The do_shortcode feature helps to use shortcodes from other WordPress plugins.
Example #3: Calculate a number of days before the football game
We’ll show you a great example of how to avoid snippet duplication. We have a football website. Several games are expected soon. And we want to show how many days are left until each game begins. We only know dates of games. Some users would create individual snippets per each game. However, the only change here is the start date of the game. So no code duplication is necessary. We will need only one snippet. And we will add it using a shortcode. The shortcode’s start_date attribute sends the date of the game. Let’s write a simple code. It is going to calculate the number of days before the football game. This value is sent from the $start_date variable (see example below).
We print 3 games with countdowns of days. Each shortcode has a start_date attribute with the date of the game. And our PHP code handles the rest.