How to remove unused shortcodes on WordPress

Are your visitors seeing unsightly tags displayed in your content, forcing you to look for a solution to effectively remove unused shortcodes from your WordPress site?

Stick around: this practical guide shows you how to identify residual uninstalled plugins and clean up your site without any technical errors.

Learn now how to hide these disruptive elements or eliminate them permanently from your database to ensure a clean user experience on your site.

Things to remember: Residual shortcodes are detrimental to the professionalism of a WordPress site. To find and remove them, identification via a dedicated plugin or masking via a code snippet are the best practices rather than directly modifying the database. These methods ensure effective and secure cleanup for the user, with the masking option offering the decisive advantage of being totally reversible in the event of future reinstallation.

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What is an unused shortcode?

An unused shortcode is nothing more than the residue of abandoned code. It’s a technical tag, like [an_old_shortcode], that remains visible after you’ve uninstalled a plugin or changed themes. The functional code has disappeared, forcing you to remove these obsolete WordPress shortcodes.

Let’s take a concrete example. Let’s say you have a form on your site managed by a plugin like Contact Form 7. If you delete it, it may leave a [contact-form-7] shortcode displayed as plain text on your pages, in place of the form.

You’ll agree that the latter is unattractive, useless, and pollutes the reading of your content.

These shortcode residues also give an unprofessional appearance and can confuse your visitors. Note that they can also appear after deleting a WordPress theme.

Why remove unused shortcodes from your WordPress site?

Removing these shortcodes makes your source code cleaner and healthier. This drastically simplifies future maintenance and avoids confusion when you, or a developer, re-read your content. Clean content is much easier to manage and migrate.

Here are some additional benefits of removing unused shortcodes from your WordPress site:

• Improved user experience: No more strange bits of code that break the reading experience.
• Simplified maintenance: Clean content is easier to manage over the long term.
• Site professionalism: A site without display problems is more credible.

First and foremost, security: Backup and identification

Backup: Your essential safety net

Don’t touch anything without first making a backup of your site. This is non-negotiable. An error in the code or the database can happen very quickly, and you won’t be able to go back without a safety net.

Aim for a complete backup: back up your site’s files AND database. If your hosting provider doesn’t offer an automatic restore tool, install a dedicated plugin like UpdraftPlus.

This is your only real insurance policy for restoring the site if the operation goes wrong.

Spot the culprits: Manual hunting

The first step is to find out what you’re tracking. What plugins have you deactivated recently? Which old theme has left its mark?

Try a basic search directly in WordPress administration. Simply use the search function within your posts and pages by typing an opening bracket: [.

Let’s be clear: this method is tedious for large sites. It’s mainly useful if you have a precise idea of the shortcode you’re looking for, like the famous [et_pb_... typical of the Divi editor.

Beware of false positives

Beware of the classic trap: false positives. Sometimes, perfectly normal text is enclosed in square brackets in your content without actually being a technical shortcode.

It’s essential to check manually before cleaning up. Don’t attempt to delete WordPress shortcodes en masse without confirming that they are indeed broken.

Method 1: Use a WordPress plugin to find and remove unused shortcodes

If manual hunting sounds painstaking, don’t worry. There are tools available to help you scan your site much more efficiently.

Clean Unused Shortcodes, your ally in detection

For a risk-free start, the free Clean Unused Shortcodes plugin remains the most accessible solution. It’s the ideal tool for novices who don’t want to touch the code.

Once active, it thoroughly scans your publications, whether posts or pages. It tracks down anything resembling a shortcode in your content. It then displays the results in a clear, easy-to-read list.

Please note that this plugin does not delete anything on its own. It simply lists the occurrences and provides a direct link to delete each shortcode found.

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Remove unused shortcodes on WordPress with the plugin

Once the results are displayed, the ball is in your court. The cleaning work remains manual, but you have guidance.

Here is the exact method to spot and remove shortcodes on WordPress with Clean Unused Shortcodes without breaking your site:

1. Go to Tools > Clean unused shortcodes.
2. Analyze the list of shortcodes found. Check for false positives by viewing the relevant publications.
3. To delete a shortcode, click on the “Clean” button. If you want to delete them all at once, you can use the “Clean All Unused Shortcodes” button.

Method 2: Hide shortcodes with a snippet

Manual removal is clean, but time-consuming. For a quick, non-destructive solution, there’s another approach: make them invisible.

The principle: Hide rather than destroy

Rather than tracking down every occurrence to remove WordPress shortcodes from the database, you can simply tell the system to ignore them. The code remains in the editor, but becomes completely invisible on the public site.

The major advantage? It’s a reversible method. If you reactivate the plugin one day, everything instantly works again. It’s the safest way to avoid irreversible errors.

Hide shortcodes by editing functions.php

If you already have a solid technical foundation and a developer profile, you can hide shortcodes on your WordPress site by adding a snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file.

To apply this method, you’ll need a code editor (VS Code, Notepad++, Sublime Text…) and FTP access to send the files to your site.

Before adding the code, keep three essential points in mind:

• Only use this solution if you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, use a plugin like Clean Unused Shortcodes.
• Always perform a full site backup (files and database) with a tool like UpdraftPlus or WP Umbrella.
• Do not modify functions.php directly. It is essential to use a child theme.

Here’s how it works:

1. Open your theme’s functions.php file.
2. Paste the following snippet: add_shortcode( 'shortcode_name', '__return_empty_string' );
3. Replace shortcode_name with the shortcode to be hidden (without square brackets).
   Example: contact-form-7 for a shortcode displayed following the deactivation of the Contact Form 7 plugin.
4. Activate and save the snippet.

If you have several shortcodes to remove, simply add a line add_shortcode( 'shortcode_name', '__return_empty_string' ); for each of them, in the same snippet.

Deleting or hiding shortcodes on WordPress: What’s the best strategy?

In most cases, hiding the shortcode is the best approach. This method is safe, totally reversible, and immediately solves display problems for your visitors.

Reserve permanent deletion for situations where you will never reinstall the offending plugin.

In any case, cleaning up unused WordPress shortcodes is essential to maintaining a clean, professional WordPress site. Whether you opt to hide them via a plugin or remove them manually, the most important thing is to improve the user experience.

Finally, always remember to make a full backup of your site before acting, to avoid any unnecessary risk to your content.

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About the author

WPMarmite Team

WPMarmite helps beginners get the best out of WordPress with in-depth tutorials and honest reviews. Meet the founder, Alex, and his team right here.