Display your Age Using a Shortcode

I was getting tired of either being generic about my age (twentysomething), or having to update it every year in my About pages. So instead, I set about creating a shortcode that would automatically update my age every year. Here is the snippet that you need to drop into your functionality plugin:

// DISPLAY YOUR AGE //

function whats_my_age_again($birthday) {
	extract( shortcode_atts( array(
		'birthday' => 'birthday'
	), $birthday));
	return date("Y", time() - strtotime($birthday)) - 1970;
}

add_shortcode('show-my-age', 'whats_my_age_again');

Now, in order to display your age, you just need to paste the shortcode in to your page, using the ‘birthday’ attribute to tell WordPress when you were born. For example, for me, it would look like this:

I am [show-my-age birthday="02/19/1985"] years old.

Aside from showing you that it’s my birthday soon, (feel free to send me some chocolates), this shortcode will do the leg work for you and update your age automatically. And then, if you’re feeling a little bit old, you can just tweak your shortcode and instantly make yourself feel better. Ta da!