Title: Fatal Error
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# Fatal Error

 *  [maxamobile](https://wordpress.org/support/users/maxamobile/)
 * (@maxamobile)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-267/)
 * Hi, I’m new to WordPress and am working on a site for a client.
 * I purchased this theme from one of the sites, and the designer is unavailable
   for 2 weeks, so I’m hoping someone can help me here.
    Everything was going well
   until I tried to add a URL to a shortcode in shortcode.php. I put the code back
   to what it was originally, and now I get this error and can’t access the dashboard
   or any pages: Fatal error: Call to undefined function add_shortcode() in /home/
   content/p/a/t/pattonpr/html/wp-includes/shortcodes.php on line 15
 * I did nothing to line 15 in this code. I’ve tried to re-upload the original shortcode.
   php file. Still no change.
 * What I was trying to do as Plan B is find the HTML code on the page to remove
   the shortcode button. I thought this might solve the problem and be the easiest
   work around to get the site back up. Any suggestions? Thanks so much in advance.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [Ganners](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ganners/)
 * (@ganners)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-267/#post-1959266)
 * Put up your php file in [http://pastebin.com/](http://pastebin.com/), It says
   that your function is missing, so perhaps the function name is wrong, you’re 
   missing an include, or the function just got deleted somewhere in the process.
 * Also it’s generally not a good idea to edit the core wordpress files, they’ll
   get overwritten in updates etc. You can hook using the add_shortcode function
   in your theme functions for example.
 *  Thread Starter [maxamobile](https://wordpress.org/support/users/maxamobile/)
 * (@maxamobile)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-267/#post-1959271)
 * Thanks, Ganners. I put the code on the site. Not sure protocol for sharing with
   you, but here’s the link: [http://pastebin.com/Nu9gE55a](http://pastebin.com/Nu9gE55a)
   
   It’s called WP_3_6
 * I assumed editing those files was a bad idea, but the instructions that came 
   with the template were not that clear to a newbie. 🙁
 * Thanks so much!
 *  [Ganners](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ganners/)
 * (@ganners)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-267/#post-1959302)
 * Ah okay, I think what you’ve done is replaced the wordpress shortcodes.php with
   your themes file.
 * So what i’d recommend is getting your shortcodes.php back to normal, so download
   wordpress again and just copy that file over it.
 * The file you pasted should be part of your theme and so not in wp-includes/ but
   in wp-content/your_theme/ which may have been where you went wrong (perhaps they’re
   both named shortcodes.php).

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Fatal Error’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [edit text](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/edit-text/)
 * [fatal error](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/fatal-error/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Ganners](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ganners/)
 * Last activity: [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-267/#post-1959302)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics