How to set the default value of a option in a theme?

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$shortname = "nuod";

array( "name" => "Custom Logo URL",
    "desc" => "Enter the link to your site's custom logo.",
    "id" => $shortname."_logo",
    "type" => "text",
    "std" => "newlogo.png")

How do i make the std be automatically set as the value for <?php echo get_option('nuod_logo'); ?>

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2 comments

  1. As @Ashfame as already pointed out, you shouldn’t store defaults in the database – that should be for user selected options (of course, if they select the defaults, then fine – store them :).

    However, you don’t need to use wp_parse_args() either. get_option allows you to select a default value. For instance:

    //If nuod_logo is not found, uses 'newlogo.pnp'
$number = get_option('nuod_logo', 'newlogo.png')

    However, often themes and plug-ins (as they should) keep their options in an array which is stored in one row in the database. So

    $my_plugin_options = get_option('my_plugins_options')

    is expected to return all options. So you could keep all options in a default array $my_plugin_defaults:

    $my_plugin_options = get_option('my_plugins_options',$my_plugin_defaults)

    but this isn’t great either – you have to redeclare $my_plugin_defaults which is simply duplicating code, making room for bugs, ugly – or you make it a global variable which is just plain wrong. The solution is to create your own ‘get_option‘ which builds on WordPress’ settings API:

     function wpse28954_get_option( $option_name='' ){

      $defaults = array(
          // Array of defaults: option => default value 
      )
      $options = get_option('my_plugins_options',$defaults);

      //Parse defaults again - see comments
      $options = wp_parse_args( $options, $defaults );

      if( !isset($options[$option_name]) )
           return false;

      return $options[$option_name];

 }

    This could be improved by allow wpse28954_get_option to set a default value in case its not in the defined defaults

    Now your defaults are stored in one, easy to manage place and you can use wpse28954_get_option['my-option'] to return the saved setting or else the default value.

    Edit

    AS @Ashfame has pointed out in the comments using wp_parse_args has the advantage of providing defaults for an unsaved subset of options. I’ve updated my answer to include this. (This makes the $defaults in get_option rather redundant). +1 for @Ashfame‘s solution which was first to suggest using wp_parse_args.

  2. This is important which most of the people don’t get right. Don’t save the defaults in the database. You should be using wp_parse_args() for this purpose.

    $defaults = array (
    'logo' => 'http://domain.com/logo.png',
    'do_extra_thing' => false
);

// Parse incomming $args into an array and merge it with $defaults
$options = wp_parse_args( $options, $defaults );

    When $options is empty, like you have just installed a plugin, it can work off without writing anything in your database. And when it has some values inside it, the missing ones will come from $defaults array.