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How to Add Default Content in Your WordPress Post Editor

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Have you ever find yourself entering the same text in all of your posts? Often people do that such as asking people to subscribe to their feeds, retweet the post, share it on facebook etc. You can always use a simple tag to add it right after the content, or you can add that text as the default content in your WordPress post editor.

Simply open up your WordPress theme’s functions.php file and paste the following code within the PHP tags ofcourse.

add_filter( 'default_content', 'my_editor_content' );
function my_editor_content( $content ) {
	$content = "If you like this post, then please consider retweeting it or sharing it on Facebook.";
	return $content;
}

And you are done. Try to create a New Post, and you should see the new content there.

Update (January 24, 2013) – One of our users asked us how to add different content for different post type in the comments. The code below will show you how to add different default content in your WordPress post editor for each specific custom post type:

add_filter( 'default_content', 'my_editor_content', 10, 2 );

function my_editor_content( $content, $post ) {

    switch( $post->post_type ) {
        case 'sources':
            $content = 'your content';
        break;
        case 'stories':
            $content = 'your content';
        break;
        case 'pictures':
            $content = 'your content';
        break;
        default:
            $content = 'your default content';
        break;
    }

    return $content;
}

Source: Justin Tadlock

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Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

47 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

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  2. Mehedi Hassan says

    But where the code will pasted. I cant paste the code in actual place in function.php. please help.

  3. John M Brooks says

    Any chance this will be updated for Gutenberg? As it stands, it currently adds the content to a “classic editor” block.

    Regardless, I appreciate this post. Thank you.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      We are in the process of going through different articles for Gutenberg/Block editor compatibility. We’ll be sure to take a look at this one :)

      Admin

    • Jack says

      I am not able to do it at the first place let alone at the beginning. Can you help guide me. Where exactly did you posted the code. The code is okay. Functions.php is okay., but placement of this is a challenge. Not able to figure out where to paste

  4. sp says

    thanks 4 the post but i want little more like i want to add code content like a small code that i can use in all post and can edit some of its vale for each post, like i want some text in bold some coloured text one youtube embeded code where i can just change video link …please help me soon with the process

  5. Dan Jones says

    Hi,

    Thanks for the code.

    Is it possible to add custom text to a post so it’s stored within the post on publishing?

    Thanks,

    Dan

  6. Grant Skinner says

    I’ve used the code you gave in the first instance and it works great, thanks.
    Q – How do I add hyper links on certain works like if I have a “Click Here” portion of text that links the user to a new page.
    Any hel would be appreciated.

  7. Krishna says

    Would you please help me by telling how to do this…when admin add new product image in media and click on insert product button the uploaded image should be added in form of shortcode into post editor.

  8. Amita Sharma says

    I need to add default content for specific template.

    add_filter( ‘default_content’, ‘custom_editor_content’ );
    function custom_editor_content( $content ) {
    global $current_screen;
    if ( $current_screen->post_type == ‘download’) {
    $content = ‘CONTENT FOR CUSTOM POST TYPE’;
    }
    return $content;
    }
    thanx in advance

  9. Mike says

    Hi, this is a great tip.
    Is it possible to add default content to a taxonomy description.
    For example, every time someone makes a new Woocommerce Product Category, I would like to add a string with a shortcode and instructions into the description field.
    Thanks.

  10. Rodrigo says

    Hi! How can I add html to the content? My content includes s and several other elements with “classes” and quotation marks. Maybe that is why the result was a blank page. Can anyone help me?

  11. Ron says

    Thanks for the update, very helpful. How can default editor text be added to existing posts/pages? For example, if I click ‘update’ post button. This code does not allow this content to be automatically added to older posts.

  12. Arvind Gupta says

    Can you tell how to do the same in portfolio post becuase i tried with it only add the content in post page

  13. Scot MacDonald says

    Might this work for excerpt as well with some tweaking? I guess just swap out content for excerpt…

  14. brendan says

    thanks! but, I’m a REAL novice at this code stuff… where within the php file do I put the code? there are so many sections within there, does it matter?

    thanks again!

  15. Dan Haddock says

    This is an excellent tool but one thing that I was really hoping could be added would be the possibility to add this default content to posts that have already been published.

    I was just wondering is there anyway of doing this as it would be the icing on a very yummy cake?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Take a look at this example:

      
      add_filter( 'default_content', 'my_editor_content', 10, 2 );
      
      function my_editor_content( $content, $post ) {
      
          switch( $post->post_type ) {
              case 'posts':
                  $content = 'your content';
              break;
              case 'stories':
                  $content = 'your content';
              break;
              case 'page':
                  $content = '';
              break;
              default:
                  $content = 'your default content';
              break;
          }
      
          return $content;
      }
      
      

      Admin

  16. Yorgo says

    when i add the code above and hit the publish button , a blank page returns. The post is saved but i have to go back and continue my work. I’m running 3.6.1
    Any ideas ?
    Thanx

  17. tazo says

    If you want to automatically add specific default or pre-defined content to your editor while publishing posts or pages, then insert one of the following codes into functions.php:

    1)
    function add_before_content($content) {
    if ( ‘page’ == $post->post_type ) return $content .’Default page content.’;
    if ( ‘post’ == $post->post_type ) return $content .’Default post content.’;
    }
    add_filter(‘the_content’, add_before_content);

    2)

    function add_before_content($content) {
    return ‘Default Message’.$content;
    }
    add_action(‘publish_post’,add_before_content);
    add_action(‘update_post’,add_before_content);
    add_filter(‘the_content’, add_before_content);

  18. AshleyBriscoe says

    How do you add a recurring http:// url using this method, when i do the http:// starts commenting the code out

  19. gcarter1mwc says

    Hi — this is perfect. But need one tweak. How can this be applied to one type of post only or even to a certain post?

    I’m not well-versed in php but tried the following:

    add_filter( ‘default_content’, ‘my_editor_content’ );

    function my_editor_content( $content ) { $content = “If you like this post, then please consider retweeting it or sharing it on Facebook.”; return $content; }

    function my_editor_content( $content ) {

    if ( is_page( ‘about’ )) {

    $content = “This is some custom content I’m adding to the post editor because I hate re-typing it.”;

    return $content;

    }

    }

    I don’t get an error. It simply doesn’t work. Is there a way to apply such a conditional to the function? Or, does a function do its thing with no respect to conditions?

    Thanks — Mike

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