How to Automatically Add a Disclaimer in WordPress (Easy Way)

Do you want to automatically show disclaimers and important notices on your WordPress website?

A disclaimer helps protect your business from legal action and provides users with additional information. Usually, you’d have to enter disclaimers in your content manually.

In this article, we will show you how to automatically add a disclaimer in WordPress using an easy method.

Automatically add a disclaimer in WordPress

Why Show a Disclaimer in WordPress?

Adding a disclaimer to your WordPress website is a great way of communicating important notices and announcements to your visitors. It also protects your business from being legally liable for any claims a user makes.

There are many situations where you can show a disclaim on your website. For example, let’s say your site features product endorsements or has affiliate links. You can display an FTC disclosure stating how you may receive compensation from the companies whose products you feature on your website.

Similarly, if you operate in an industry that is governed by different regulations, then you can show legal disclaimers. This is really helpful if you’re offering medical or health advice, legal advice, or financial investment tips.

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You can show a disclaimer notifying users that they should get in touch with an internet law attorney to seek legal advice.

Legal disclosure example

On the other hand, if you have a WordPress blog where you share personal opinions, then adding a disclosure can safeguard you from any legal action.

That said, let’s look at how you can automatically add a disclaimer in WordPress. You can click the links below to jump to any sections of this post.

Creating Disclaimers in WordPress

You can add disclosures manually in WordPress using the content editor. Simply enter the disclaimer content in your blog posts or page. However, this is time-consuming since WordPress doesn’t offer an option to show these disclaimers automatically, and you’d have to edit every page.

An easy way to do that is by using WPCode. It is the best WordPress code snippet plugin that makes it very easy to manage and add custom code snippets.

What’s a Code Blocks Snippet?

WPCode offers a Custom Blocks Snippets feature that you can use to create disclaimers. What it does is it creates a custom WordPress block that you can automatically place anywhere on your site.

Usually, this would require editing code or building a reusable block. WPCode makes the process easier, and you don’t have to mess around with the website code or have to manually edit posts and pages.

Aside from creating disclaimers, you can also use this WPCode feature to make custom WordPress blocks for call-to-action boxes, display important notices, create interactive blocks that include forms or image sliders, and much more.

For this tutorial, we will be using the WPCode Pro version because it includes the Custom Blocks Snippets option. However, there is also WPCode free version you can use to get started.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the WPCode Pro plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can head to Code Snippets » Settings from the WordPress admin panel and enter the license key. You’ll find the license key in your WPCode account area.

Enter WPCode license key

Next, you can go to Code Snippets » + Add Snippet from the WordPress dashboard.

From here, you’ll need to select the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.

Choose the Custom Code option in the WPCode library to insert an ad

After that, you can enter a name for your snippet, like ‘Disclaimer Notice.’

Next, you must click the Code Type dropdown menu and select the ‘Blocks Snippet’ option. When you’re done, simply click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

Select blocks snippets and save

You can now edit your disclaimer notice using the WordPress content editor.

To do that, go ahead and click the ‘Edit with Block Editor’ button.

Next, you’ll be taken to the block editor in WordPress. Go ahead and enter the text for your disclaimer.

Enter the text for your disclaimer

You can further customize your disclaimer notice using the styling options in the block editor.

Simply switch to the ‘Style’ tab in the Settings panel on the right. From here, you can change the color of the text, background, and link. There are also options to edit the size of the text.

For this tutorial, we will add a background color for the disclaimer notice so that it stands out from the rest of the text. Don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button.

Customize your disclaimer notice

After customizing your disclaimer notice, you can then click the ‘Return to WPCode Snippet’ button at the top.

Automatically Adding Disclaimers in WordPress

Once you’re on the WPCode Snippet screen, simply scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section. Here, you can select when and where your disclaimer notice will appear.

You can keep the ‘Insert Method’ to Auto Insert. After that, go ahead and click the Location dropdown menu.

Select insertion method for code snippet

WPCode will now show multiple options. Go ahead and switch to the Page-Specific tab.

Next, you can choose where your site will display the disclaimer. For example, it can appear at the beginning of a post, after a few paragraphs, at the end of the post, and more.

For the sake of this tutorial, we will select the ‘Insert After Paragraph’ option. This way, the snippet will appear on all the pages after a certain number of paragraphs.

Select location for code snippet

WPCode will also let you select the number of paragraphs, after which the custom block snippet will appear.

For example, we want the disclaimer notice to automatically appear after the first 3 paragraphs on all the pages on our demo site.

Update and activate the snippet

Once you’re done, don’t forget to activate the blocks snippet and click the ‘Update’ button at the top.

Besides that, you can also insert the disclaimer notice on specific pages using shortcodes.

Simply switch to the Insert Method from Auto Insert to Shortcode.

Use shortcode to add blocks snippet

After that, you can copy the shortcode and add it anywhere on your website. For example, you can show the disclaimer on specific pages and posts.

WPCode also lets you schedule your disclaimer scripts. This is really useful if you have a time-sensitive notice to display on your website. You can simply select the start date and end date for scheduling the snippet.

Schedule your snippet

When you’re done, don’t forget to activate the snippet and click the ‘Update’ button.

You can now visit your website to see the disclaimer in action.

View disclaimer notice preview

We hope this article helped you learn about how to automatically add a disclaimer in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of must-have WordPress plugins and tools for business sites and how to create an email newsletter the right way.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Automatically Add a Disclaimer in WordPress (Easy Way) first appeared on WPBeginner.

How to Easily Add Custom Code in WordPress (Without Breaking Your Site)

Often while reading WordPress tutorials, you may be asked to add custom code snippets in your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.

The problem is that even the slightest mistake can break your website.

In this article, we will show you an easy way to add custom code in WordPress without breaking your site.

How to easily add custom code in WordPress

The Problem with Custom Code Snippets (And How to Fix It)

Often you’ll find code snippets in WordPress tutorials with instructions to add them into your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

The biggest problem is that even a tiny mistake in the custom code snippet can break your WordPress site and make it inaccessible.

Not to mention, if you update your WordPress theme, then all your customizations get removed.

The other problem is that if you add multiple code snippets in a site-specific plugin, it can become hard to manage the file.

Luckily, there is an easier way for users to add and manage custom code snippets in WordPress.

WPCode is the most popular code snippets plugin used by over 1 million WordPress websites. It makes it easy to add code snippets in WordPress without having to edit your theme’s functions.php file.

WPCode Code Snippets Plugin

WPCode also makes it simple to add tracking codes for Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Google AdSense, and more to your site’s header and footer areas.

You’ll never have to worry about breaking your site because the smart code snippet validation helps you prevent common code errors.

In addition, WPCode comes with a built-in snippets library where you can find all of the most popular WordPress code snippets like disable REST API, disable comments, disable Gutenberg, allow SVG file uploads, and much more. This eliminates the need to install separate plugins for each feature request.

The best part is that you can manage all your code snippets from one central screen and add tags to organize them.

With that said, let’s take a look at how to easily add custom code snippets in WordPress with WPCode.

Adding Custom Code Snippets in WordPress

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WPCode plugin on your website.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Code Snippets’ to your WordPress admin bar. Clicking on it will show you a list of all the custom code snippets you have saved on your site.

Since you just installed the plugin, your list will be empty.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Add New’ button to add your first custom code snippet in WordPress.

Click 'Add New' in WPCode to create a new custom snippet

This will bring you to the ‘Add Snippet’ page. Here you can choose a code snippet from the pre-made library or add your custom code.

To add custom code, click on the ‘Use snippet’ button underneath the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.

Add custom code in WPCode

You need to start by entering a title for your custom code snippet. This could be anything that helps you identify the code.

After that, you can copy and paste your code snippet into the code box. Be sure to also select the correct code type from the drop-down menu on the right.

Adding your first code snippet

In the screenshot above, we have added a custom code snippet to remove the WordPress version number from our test site.

function wpb_remove_version() {
return '';
}
add_filter('the_generator', 'wpb_remove_version');

Below the code box, you will see insertion options. There are two main insertion options: Auto Insert and Shortcode (Default).

Choose insertion option for code snippet

If you chose the ‘Auto Insert’ method, the snippet will be automatically inserted and executed on your site.

You can automatically run the snippet only in the WordPress admin area, on the front-end of your site, or everywhere. If you are unsure, then select the default ‘Run snippet everywhere’ option.

With the ‘Shortcode’ method, the snippet is not automatically inserted. Once you save the snippet, you’ll get a shortcode specific to the snippet that you can use anywhere on your site.

When you scroll further down, you will see a ‘Basic info’ area. You can add anything here that helps you understand what this code does, where you found it, and why you are adding it to your website.

Add code description and tags

You can also assign tags to your code snippet. This will help you sort your code snippets by topic and functionality.

The priority field allows you to control the order in which the snippets are executed when you want to display multiple snippets in the same location. By default, all snippets get a priority of 10. If you want a snippet to display earlier than others, simply set the snippet priority to a lower number, like 5.

Lastly, you can use the powerful ‘Smart Conditional Logic’ section to either show or hide auto-inserted snippets based on a set of rules.

Use smart conditional logic to show or hide snippets

For example, you can show code snippets to logged-in users only, load code snippets only on specific page URLs, and more.

When you’re finished choosing options, you can click the ‘Save Snippet’ button in the top-right corner of the screen and toggle the switch from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active.’

Save and activate code snippet

If you want to save the code snippet and not activate it, then simply click on the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

Once you have saved and activated the code snippet, it will be added to your site automatically, if that’s the insertion method you chose, or displayed as a shortcode.

Handling Errors in Custom Code

Often, if you make a mistake in adding the custom code in your site-specific plugin or theme file, then it would immediately make your site inaccessible.

You would start seeing a syntax error or a 500 internal server error on your site. To fix this you’ll need to manually undo your code using an FTP client.

The neat part about the WPCode plugin is that it will automatically detect a syntax error in the code and immediately deactivate it.

Error handling in your custom code snippet

It will also show you a helpful error message, so you can debug the error.

WPCode’s smart code snippet validation will also detect any errors as you’re adding your custom code.

Smart code snippet validation to find code errors

Hovering over the error will bring up instructions to help you fix it.

Managing Your Custom Code Snippets

WPCode plugin provides an easy user interface to manage your custom code snippets in WordPress.

You can save code snippets without activating them on your site, and then activate or deactivate the snippet at any time you want. It’s also possible to filter code snippets by type and location, and use tags to organize your code snippets easily.

WPCode - WordPress Snippets Organized by Tags

You can also export specific code snippets or bulk export all of them.

Simply go to Code Snippets » Tools and click on the ‘Export’ tab.

Export your custom code snippets

If you’re moving websites to a different server, you can easily import your code snippets to the new site.

Just visit the Code Snippets » Tools » Import page and upload the export file.

Import code snippets with WPCode

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add custom code in WordPress. Want to experiment with some code snippets on your website? Check out our list of extremely useful tricks for the WordPress functions file, and don’t forget to see our ultimate guide to speeding up your WordPress site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Add Custom Code in WordPress (Without Breaking Your Site) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Introducing WPCode – Easy WordPress Code Manager to Future-Proof Your Website Customizations

Have you ever wanted to reduce the number of WordPress plugins you’re using on your website?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy way that allowed you to add future-proof WordPress customizations through code snippets WITHOUT breaking your website?

If you’re like me and most other smart website owners, then you have at least wished for this solution a couple times in your WordPress journey.

Today, I’m excited to share the launch of my free WPCode plugin which will transform the way you think about WordPress customization.

We built this tool to help you save time and hassle when managing your website customizations. This is like the ultimate Swiss-Army knife tool that will help you replace dozens of existing WordPress plugins while making your website faster.

Introducing WPCode - WordPress Code Snippets Plugin

Background Story

In 2012, I created a free plugin called Insert Headers and Footers.

The goal of this plugin was to make it easy for me and other WPBeginner readers to add code to our WordPress site’s header and footer area without editing theme files!

This would include things like Google Analytics script, custom CSS code, Facebook Pixel, AdSense code, and more.

Over the last decade, this simple plugin grew to over 1 million active installs.

Enter tracking code in header

In the same time period, WordPress grew a lot too with tons of new features and plugins.

Every month, I would get requests from our users to add more functionality such as the ability to conditionally load scripts on certain pages, ability to add code snippets in other areas of the website, and so on.

After a lot of thought and consideration, we have decided to expand this free plugin and make it a full-featured code snippet management solution for WordPress with conditional logic, auto-insertion, and much more.

Using the new plugin you can:

  • Add tracking scripts / various webmaster tool verification meta details in your site with just a few clicks.
  • Add banner ads or other dynamic content elements after first paragraph of every blog post, at the end of each blog post, etc.
  • Remove WordPress features that you don’t want such as REST API, XML-RPC, Comments, etc.
  • Easily copy & paste code snippets from tutorials in your WordPress site without errors.
  • And really this is just scratching the surface.

All of these features are available to you for free!

If you’re a marketer, think of WPCode like a Google Tag Manager but inside WordPress.

If you’re a regular business owner, think of this as a swiss-army knife for your website. It will help you do what you want to do – nothing more, nothing less.

WPCode is by far the MOST POWERFUL plugin you’ll install on your WordPress site, and I’m not exaggerating.

Just give me 5 minutes of your attention, and I’ll show you — keep on reading.

What is WPCode?

WPCode is a powerful WordPress code snippet plugin that makes it easy for you to add custom WordPress features using code snippets without editing your theme’s functions.php file.

It comes with a built-in code snippets library where you can find some of my most popular WordPress code snippets that will help you eliminate the need of separate plugins.

WPCode WordPress Code Snippets Library

For example, there are ready-made snippets that will help you:

  • Disable XML-RPC – this is good for WordPress security
  • Allow SVG File Upload – eliminates the need for separate plugin
  • Disable Gutenberg – eliminates the need for separate plugin
  • Disable Comments – eliminates the need for separate plugin
  • Add Tracking Scripts for Google Analytics, Facebook, AdSense, and other platforms

And there are currently over two dozen other code snippets that you can use to add custom functionality while reducing the number of plugins on your site.

For an average website owner, this plugin will help you reduce at least 6 – 8 other plugins that you might be using right now with just the ready-made snippets that are there.

My plan is to continue to add more custom code snippets there to cover popular use-cases. If you have suggestions, please let us know by filling out the form here.

If you’re a WordPress developer / freelancer that wants to contribute code snippets, please send us your snippet using the form above.

Future-Proof Site Customization & Code Management

Most WordPress customization tutorials will ask you to add code snippets to your theme’s functions.php file. This old way simply makes managing code snippets messy, and it also prevents you from updating your theme.

If you ever update your theme or switch to another theme, then you will lose all custom code functions that you added in your functions.php file.

WPCode solves this by providing you an easy way to insert header and footer scripts along with other code snippets directly from your WordPress dashboard. These code snippets actually run as if they were in your theme’s functions.php file, but we make your customizations future-proof.

Create New Custom Snippet in WordPress

You can safely update themes or switch to another theme without ever losing your important website customizations.

Another problem with adding custom code snippets on your theme’s functions.php file was that even the smallest mistake can break your website and make it inaccessible.

So we created our smart code snippet validation. This helps you prevent common code errors to ensures you never break your website when adding code snippets or header and footer scripts.

You can manage all your header and footer scripts as well as other custom code snippets from a single screen. We even make it easy for you to organize code snippets using Tags and add reminder notes with each code snippet.

WPCode - WordPress Snippets Organized by Tags

Built-in WordPress Code Generators

Aside from our growing code snippets library, we also have WordPress code generators to help you quickly get ready-to-use custom code using the latest WordPress coding standards and API’s.

WPCode Generators for WordPress

Examples of Custom Code Generators with Admin UI include:

  • Custom Post Type Generator – Create custom code snippet for Post Types.
  • Custom Taxonomy Generator – Get custom code snippet for Taxonomies.
  • WP Query Generator – Get custom code snippet for WP_Query to load posts.
  • Custom Sidebar Generator – Create custom code snippet to register custom sidebars or widget-ready areas.
  • Custom Widget Generator – Custom code snippet to register custom widgets.
  • Navigation Menu Generator – Custom code snippet for registering new navigation menu locations in your theme.

Aside from the above, we also have code snippet generator for scheduling a cron job, registering scripts & stylesheets, adding custom post status, and more.

In the past, beginners and intermediate users would use WordPress plugins to create custom post types, taxonomies, etc with an admin UI. The problem is that those are one-time use plugins that in the background are just generating custom code snippets.

Now with WPCode free generators, you can cut out those plugins while still adding the custom functionality that you want with an admin UI.

This will be a huge time-saver for new WordPress developers and web professionals who’re building websites for clients.

Conditional Logic for Code Snippets + Auto Insertion Priority

My goal with WPCode was to create a WordPress code snippets plugin that’s both EASY and POWERFUL.

That’s why aside from our global header and footer scripts, we added advanced features like conditional logic for code snippets and made it easy.

Instead of learning WordPress conditional logic queries, you can use visual conditional logic to decide when a certain snippet would load.

WPCode Smart Conditional Logic

Examples use-cases of WPCode conditional logic:

  • Load code snippets for logged in users only
  • Load PHP code snippets for specific user roles
  • Load PHP code snippets only on specific page URLs
  • Insert header and footer pixel scripts on specific pages
  • Show code snippets based on type of page
  • Run code snippet only on certain post types
  • Load header and footer code snippet based on referrer source
  • and more…

We also added both automatic code insertion and manual output using shortcodes. This way you can add features using a custom shortcode, or simply automatically add certain features on area that you want.

WPCode Auto Insert PHP Code

Our Auto Insert feature allows you to run the code snippet everywhere or choose from custom options like:

  • Run code snippet only on frontend
  • Run code snippet only in WordPress admin area
  • Add header and footer scripts sitewide
  • Insert PHP code snippet before or after post content
  • Insert code snippet before or after specific paragraph
  • Insert code snippet on specific archive pages

Aside from that, we also added a visual code snippet priority system, so you can choose the order for your custom functions to avoid code conflict.

Add code description, tags, and priority in WPCode

What are Some Example Use Cases + Plugins You Can Replace?

WPCode is the one plugin that helps you get rid of dozens of other plugins without losing functionality.

Here are some of the top use-cases :

  • Insert Headers and Footers scripts
  • Insert Google Analytics Tracking Code in Header and Footer
  • Insert PHP Code Snippets or JavaScript code snippet without modifying theme’s functions.php file
  • Insert Facebook Pixels code, Google Conversion Pixels code, and other Advertising Conversion Pixel Scripts in WordPress header and footer with conditional logic
  • Insert Google AdSense Ads code, Amazon Native Contextual Ads code, and other Media Ads code
  • Insert Custom JavaScript, CSS, and HTML code
  • Insert Site Verification Meta tags for Social Media, Google Search Console, and other Domain verification in the header and footer of your site
  • Insert re-usable custom content blocks
  • Insert Ads code in content after specific paragraphs
  • Show or hide custom code snippets based on conditional logic
  • Disable XML-RPC, Disable Rest API, disable comments, allow SVG file uploads, disable Gutenberg and enable Classic Editor without adding extra plugins

Just with our current features and ready-made code snippets library, you can replace several popular plugins including:

WPCode comes with a ready-made code snippets library that allows you to replace several popular plugins including:

  • Disable Comment plugins
  • Disable XML-RPC plugins
  • Disable Rest API plugins
  • Disable Gutenberg plugins
  • Classic Editor plugin
  • Allow SVG File Upload plugins
  • Disable RSS feed plugins
  • Disable Search plugins
  • Disable Automatic Updates plugins
  • Disable Admin Bar plugins
  • Disable Widget Blocks plugin
  • Classic Widgets plugin
  • Remove WordPress Version Number plugins
  • Facebook Pixel plugins
  • Google AdSense plugins
  • Custom Post Types UI plugins
  • Other WordPress Generator plugins

On average, I believe you can easily replace 6 – 8 existing plugins on your website because a typical website often installs these one-off feature plugins.

Now you can remove those plugins, clean up your admin area, and simplify your website management.

What’s Coming Next in WPCode?

Since the Insert Headers and Footers plugin had over 1 million users, getting all these new features for free was a surprise for everyone.

I’m extremely pleased with the community response so far, as everyone is loving the new features.

We have an exciting roadmap ahead of us to make this plugin even more powerful. Some of the things that we’re working on:

  • A larger list of Code Snippet library that is vetted by our WordPress experts
  • Save custom snippets to cloud – this will be great for those creating & managing multiple websites as you can build your personalized snippet library inside the plugin
  • and much more

We’re truly building something special here. If you have ideas on how we can make the plugin more helpful to you, please send us your suggestions.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner, and we look forward to continue serving you for years to come.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

P.S. Want us to acquire or invest in your WordPress business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund.

The post Introducing WPCode – Easy WordPress Code Manager to Future-Proof Your Website Customizations first appeared on WPBeginner.