Automatically changes special characters

Good day

I have a code snippet that is suppose to count the amount of posts of a specific user. Where the code checks that the user is logged in it keeps changing one of the special characters “>” to “>”.

Here is the code:

function total_post_count() {
	$current_user = wp_get_current_user();
	if ( 0 == $current_user->ID ) {
	    return;
	} else {
		$profile_id = um_profile_id();
		$count = count_user_posts( $profile_id );
	    echo "<p class='post_count'>" . $count . "</p>";
	}
}
add_shortcode( 'total_post_c', 'total_post_count' );

The “>” in line 3 is the one that keeps changing. The strange part is that the snippet works for a few days and then suddenly the snippet automatically deactivates due to a syntax error and I find that the “>” was changed to “>”. When this happens all the other snippets also stop working although they are still activated. Once I change the “>” back to “>” then I can activate this snippet and all the other snippets start working again.

Why would this keep happing at random intervals, sometimes after a few days, and how do I go about preventing this change in the future?

• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by freedomsoftwareza.