Site goes down when adding WordPress approved code

Update: The same thing happens if I try to enter the code for customizing the password form text from the same WordPress Codex page.

You should never just copy and paste code into your functions.php file. You need to understand the code, what it does, how it does it, and how PHP works in general before you ever touch a piece of code like that.

That type of code is meant for developers, not average users. If you need some special functionality on your site, look for a plugin in the plugin directory that implements that functionality.

Also, the codex is a Wiki. Nothing there is “WordPress approved”. It’s editable by anybody.

Well, that’s a rather unhelpful response.

Firstly, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that instructional documents hosted on the WordPress site would be checked by someone on the WordPress staff to confirm accuracy. Even Wikipedia has people checking for proper sources etc. And if some special additional code is needed to make the code listed there (which the page says to just paste in and that’s it) work, then it would be nice if the page mentioned that. It’s not as if I have a ton of customization in my functions.php file that I might expect to conflict with it. In fact, the only code in it at all at the moment is bit that directs the child theme to load the parent styles from Twenty-Ten.

Secondly, I am not seeing any plugins that clearly allow password form customization for just one area of the site, and only one that says it will hide the pages–which doesn’t have any track record of positive reviews to let me know *it* won’t mess up my site. It’s not as if plugins are guaranteed to work for “average users” without any hitches. At least when I’m entering code directly, I know exactly what’s been changed on my site.

Thirdly, I have seen many people who appear to be “average users” post questions here about code they have seen mentioned that they can’t get to work for their own site, and people have advised them on possible solutions. I have made similar inquiries here for a different site in the past and had people give me suggestions. So I’m not sure why suddenly it would be unreasonable for me to expect similar responses.

If anyone else has any thoughts on adjustments that might get either of the code segments mentioned to work on my site–or, heck, knows of a good plugin that will hide password protected pages from menus, archives, etc. and allow for customization of the password form text–I’d be grateful for your help!

There is no “WordPress staff”. WordPress is free software, made by volunteers and people who contribute to open-source code. We’re not a company.

If you have questions about the code in specific, then I’m happy to answer them. However, if you pasted code into your site and this broke your site, then my response would be to remove that code. Especially if you’re pasting it into your theme’s functions.php file, which you should never really do. Editing that file is dangerous and can indeed break your site if you don’t know what you’re doing. Code isn’t fuzzy, it’s exact. If you do it wrong, then it will break exactly in the way you’ve written it to do so.

Instead, you should make a custom plugin for your site, and try pasting the code into that. Plugins are safer, because they can be deactivated. More to the point, if you are pasting into a live site, then you should not be doing that at all. Make a test site, and test your changes locally first. Then you can figure out problems without breaking your live site in the process. Never edit code on a live site unless you absolutely have to. That’s just bad development practice.

Snippets of code like that are provided for developers, so that they can see how something works and how to modify pieces of WordPress. They’re not meant for end users, and certainly not meant for “pasting” into live sites. No matter what it says on the page. There is no case where you would take a snippet of code that you do not know what it does, and run it on your live site without understanding it first. Not unless there are extreme circumstances involved.

What I’m saying is, that if you don’t know code, you should learn it first, and ask specific questions about those snippets. Those sorts of questions we’re always happy to answer. Your question is basically “why doesn’t this code work on my site?”, and the ultimate answer there is probably “because you did something wrong and there’s no way for us to tell what.” I’m not trying to be harsh or anything, but that’s the truth of it. If you have more specific questions about problems with the code, I’m happy to take a look and answer those questions for you.

If you want a direct answer as to “Can anyone advise on why it isn’t working?”, then it’s probably because you pasted it in the wrong place, or left a blank line between some ?> and <?php code pieces, or did something else formatting-wise which caused the functions.php file to produce output. This would cause the infamous “headers cannot be sent” error, because the functions.php file is special in that it must always produce no output, and copy-pasting code in there randomly by non-coders will generally make one of those sorts of mistakes, thus breaking their site. It’s fairly commonplace. Even something as simple as a blank space or line at the beginning or end of the file will cause errors there.

Apologies for any confusion re: my use of the term “staff”–I meant the staff of volunteers.

I appreciate the suggestions–I will try the custom plugin approach. I didn’t realize the functions file was particularly finicky. I didn’t insert any blank lines or change any formatting from what was posted, but obviously something went off, and I acknowledge that my coding experience is relatively limited.

Thanks!