Hide Broken Shortcodes

by Scott Reilly

Description

By default in WordPress, if the plugin that provides the functionality to handle any given shortcode is disabled, or if a shortcode is improperly defined in the content (such as with a typo), then the shortcode in question will appear on the site in its entirety, unprocessed by WordPress. At best this reveals unsightly code-like text to visitors and at worst can potentially expose information not intended to be seen by visitors.

This plugin prevents unhandled shortcodes from appearing in the content of a post or page. If the shortcode is of the self-closing variety, then the shortcode tag and its attributes are not displayed and nothing is shown in their place. If the shortcode is of the enclosing variety (an opening and closing tag bookend some text or markup), then the text that is being enclosed will be shown, but the shortcode tag and attributes that surround the text will not be displayed.

See the Filters section for more customization tips.

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

Developer Documentation

Developer documentation can be found in DEVELOPER-DOCS.md. That documentation covers the hooks provided by the plugin.

As an overview, these are the hooks provided by the plugin:

hide_broken_shortcode : Customizes what, if anything, gets displayed when a broken shortcode is encountered.
hide_broken_shortcodes_filters : Customizes what filters to hook to find text with potential broken shortcodes.

Installation

Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or install the plugin code inside the plugins directory for your site (typically /wp-content/plugins/).
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
Optionally filter ‘hide_broken_shortcode’ or ‘hide_broken_shortcodes_filters’ if you want to customize the behavior of the plugin

Faq

Why am I still seeing a broken shortcode even with this plugin activated?

By default, the plugin only tries to hide broken shortcodes appearing in post/page content, post/page excerpts, and widgets. It does not hide broken shortcodes that may appear in post/page titles, custom fields, menus, comments, etc.

How can I type out a shortcode in a post so that it doesn’t get processed by WordPress or hidden by this plugin?

If you want want a shortcode to appear as-is in a post (for example, you are trying to provide an example of how to use a shortcode), can use the shortcode escaping syntax, which is built into WordPress, by using two opening brackets to start the shortcode, and two closing brackets to close the shortcode:

[[some_shortcode]]
[[an_example style="yes"]some text[/an_example]]

The shortcodes will appear in your post (but without the double brackets).

How can I prevent certain broken shortcodes from being hidden?

Assuming you want to allow the broken shortcodes ‘abc’ and ‘gallery’ to be ignored by this plugin (and therefore not hidden if broken), you can include the following in your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin:

/**
 * Permit certain shortcodes to appear as broken without being hidden.
 *
 * @param string $display        The text to display in place of the broken shortcode.
 * @param string $shortcode_name The name of the shortcode.
 * @param array  $m              The regex match array for the shortcode.
 * @return string
 */
function allowed_broken_shortcodes( $display, $shortcode_name, $m ) {
    $shortcodes_not_to_hide = array( 'abc', 'gallery' );
    if ( in_array( $shortcode_name, $shortcodes_not_to_hide ) ) {
        $display = $m[0];
    }
    return $display;
}
add_filter( 'hide_broken_shortcode', 'allowed_broken_shortcodes', 10, 3 );

Does this plugin have unit tests?

Yes. The tests are not packaged in the release .zip file or included in plugins.svn.wordpress.org, but can be found in the plugin’s GitHub repository.

Reviews

Useful Tool - 5-Stars!!!

By Jimmy Lee (shirtguy72) on May 23, 2023

VERY Useful Tool - 5-Stars!!!

Working fine, THANKS!

Excellent

By nemausus30 on January 18, 2023

Super !

For me it works

By sob2 on June 27, 2022

Does the job, nice.

Works Great!

By Morshed Alam (sumon1068) on December 25, 2018

This plugin does what it says. Really a great plugin. Thank you developer.

It doesnt work

By zakisp on March 3, 2018

I installed the plugin but shortcode is still appearing The shortcode is a qtranslate language string documentation can be improved and maybe you can add troubleshooting section in the documentation or the reason why it might not work

Nice

By mstoneman on June 22, 2017

Not flashy. Does one thing and does it right. If shortcode isn't working, readers can't see it.

For beginners, what to do ?

By Flam696 on December 3, 2016

For beginners, what to do? How it works ? Make a SQL query? My shortcodes are always visible in the post and the pages ...

Changelog

2.0 (2025-10-31)

Change: Discontinue unnecessary explicit loading of textdomain
Change: Merge register_filters() into init()
Change: Improve documentation for provided filters
Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.8+
Change: Note compatibility through PHP 8.3+
Change: Remove development and testing-related files from release packaging
Change: Reduce number of ‘Tags’ from readme.txt

1.9.4 (2021-10-09)

New: Add DEVELOPER-DOCS.md and move hooks documentation into it
Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.8+
Change: Tweak installation instruction
Change: Tweak TODO entry
Unit tests:
- Change: Restructure unit test directories
  - Change: Move phpunit/ into tests/
  - Change: Move phpunit/bin into tests/
- Change: Remove ‘test-‘ prefix from unit test file
- Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin file constant
- Change: In bootstrap, add backcompat for PHPUnit pre-v6.0

1.9.3 (2021-04-18)

Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.7+

Full changelog is available in CHANGELOG.md.