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How do I get shortcodes to expand in the header or footer?

Q. How do I get shortcodes to expand in the header or footer?
A. Ensure the oik_add_shortcodes action has been run.

Scenario

You have in your theme’s header.php or footer.php file code such as

You appear to be a bot. Output may be restricted


echo do_shortcode( "[nivo]" );
echo do_shortcode( "[bw_tides tideurl=http://www.tidetimes.org.uk/chichester-harbour-entrance-tide-times.rss]" );
 

When you display the page the shortcodes are not expanded. You just get


[nivo]
[bw_tides tideurl=http://www.tidetimes.org.uk/chichester-harbour-entrance-tide-times.rss]
 

The following is also true:

  • The plugins for the shortcodes ( oik-nivo-slider and uk-tides are activated
  • The plugin upon which they depend ( oik ) is also activated
  • There are no shortcodes in the page content nor text widgets

Explanation

  • To save a little time on each page load, the oik base plugin defers registering shortcodes until it believes it’s necessary.
  • It determines this by checking for a [ in any content that may be expected to contain shortcodes.
  • When it sees a [ it invokes the oik_add_shortcodes action.
  • Plugins such as oik-nivo-slider and uk-tides respond to this action, and define their own shortcodes
  • It’s possible that by the time you get to your code, the oik based shortcodes have not been registered, so the codes don’t get expanded.

Solution – PHP code change

Change your code to force the registration of shortcodes

You appear to be a bot. Output may be restricted


do_action( "oik_add_shortcodes" );
echo do_shortcode( "[nivo]" );
echo do_shortcode( "[bw_tides tideurl=http://www.tidetimes.org.uk/chichester-harbour-entrance-tide-times.rss]" );
 

Depending on where you put the code you may need to enclose it in starting and ending PHP tags.

Solution – no PHP code

Introduce a shortcode into your content or a text widget. You may choose to use a shortcode which appears to produce no output, such as [clear]

[clear]

or just use one of the simple, but useful, shortcodes, such as

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