WordPress Shortcode to Get Text from URL Vars/Parameters

Sometimes you may have a URL that has parameters or variables included in it that you wish to display on a page or post within WordPress.  In cases like this all that’s needed is a simple function to get the information from the URL onto the page itself.

Let’s take the following URL as an example:

https://www.example.com/?firstname=Warren&lastname=Chandler

Simply paste the following into your theme or child theme’s functions.php file.

function ShowURLVars( $atts ) {
     extract( shortcode_atts( array(
         'param' => 'param',
     ), $atts ) );
     
     
     return stripslashes(esc_attr(esc_html($_GET[$param])));
 }
 add_shortcode('URLVar', 'ShowURLVars');

Then once you’re done, add the shortcode to the page or post itself like so.

Hey there, [URLVar param='firstname'] [URLVar param='lastname'].  Welcome to my website.

This will output: Hey there, Warren Chandler. Welcome to my website.

Nice and easy!