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FAQ • Support

When a WPCode Snippet Has No Location Set — and No Way to Set One

Field Note #177
🔬 Resolved 🟢 Beginner ⏱ 5 Minutes ✓ Observation from Experience

⚡ Quick Fix (TL;DR)

The Fix: 1. Open the snippet and look for an **Insertion** setting near the top of the editor (separate from Location).
2. Confirm whether it's set to Auto Insert, Shortcode, Page Builder, or another method — Location only exists under Auto Insert.
3. If it should be auto-inserted site-wide, switch Insertion to Auto Insert; the Location dropdown will then appear and can be set normally.
4. If it's intentionally a shortcode snippet, confirm the shortcode is actually placed somewhere — otherwise the snippet's code isn't running anywhere at all, even though it exists and is marked active.

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The symptom
In the WPCode snippet list, every custom CSS/HTML snippet showed a Location value (e.g. “Site Wide Header”) except one, which showed a blank Location column. Opening that specific snippet to set its location manually did not reveal a Location field anywhere in the editor.

Initial assumption

The first instinct was that this was a display glitch, or that the snippet had somehow been created or imported incorrectly and needed to be deleted and rebuilt from scratch.

Investigation
The Location field in WPCode only appears when a snippet’s **Insertion method** is set to **Auto Insert**. If a snippet’s Insertion method is instead set to something else — most commonly **Shortcode** — the Location field is intentionally hidden, because a shortcode-based snippet isn’t automatically placed anywhere; it only runs wherever “ is manually placed in a page or post.
 
This particular snippet had been created with Insertion method set to Shortcode, not Auto Insert, which explained both the blank Location column and the missing field in the editor.

What to check
When a WPCode snippet has no Location value and the Location field seems to be missing entirely:
 
1. Open the snippet and look for an **Insertion** setting near the top of the editor (separate from Location).
2. Confirm whether it’s set to Auto Insert, Shortcode, Page Builder, or another method — Location only exists under Auto Insert.
3. If it should be auto-inserted site-wide, switch Insertion to Auto Insert; the Location dropdown will then appear and can be set normally.
4. If it’s intentionally a shortcode snippet, confirm the shortcode is actually placed somewhere — otherwise the snippet’s code isn’t running anywhere at all, even though it exists and is marked active.

Troubleshooting lesson

A missing settings field is sometimes not a bug — it can be conditionally hidden based on another setting elsewhere in the same form. When a field you expect to see isn’t there, check for a parent setting controlling its visibility before assuming something is broken or needs to be rebuilt.

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