Title: featured_posts_before and featured_posts_after
Last modified: August 21, 2016

---

# featured_posts_before and featured_posts_after

 *  [Andi Lee Davis](https://wordpress.org/support/users/andi-lee-davis/)
 * (@andi-lee-davis)
 * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/featured_posts_before-and-featured_posts_after/)
 * hi there,
 * Having a look at the twentyfourteen in featured-content.php in the theme has 
   two actions:
 * twentyfourteen_featured_posts_before
    and twentyfourteen_featured_posts_after
 * Can anyone shed any light to where the action is hiding as I cannot find it in
   the entire site. I seems to do nothing commenting them out.
    What is the purpose
   of these?
 * Thanks
 * Andi

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  [stephencottontail](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stephencottontail/)
 * (@stephencottontail)
 * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/featured_posts_before-and-featured_posts_after/#post-4903989)
 * Those are action hooks, and technically the act of calling `do_action()` is enough
   to create them, so they don’t actually need to be defined elsewhere. Their purpose
   is allow you to write PHP functions and have WordPress execute them when specific
   events occur. In this particular case, any function hooked onto these action 
   hooks would execute before and after Twenty Fourteen displays the featured content.
   As a fairly useless example, consider this code:
 *     ```
       function display_text() {
           echo "<p>I like pie.</p>";
       }
       add_action( 'twentyfourteen_featured_posts_after', 'display_text' );
       ```
   
 * WordPress would execute that function every time Twenty Fourteen displays featured
   content and the phrase “I like pie.” would appear on your website, just after
   the featured content grid.
 *  Thread Starter [Andi Lee Davis](https://wordpress.org/support/users/andi-lee-davis/)
 * (@andi-lee-davis)
 * [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/featured_posts_before-and-featured_posts_after/#post-4903996)
 * Sorry I’m still trying to get my head around filters and actions.
    This seemed
   to do nothing to me as was not calling any function named twentyfourteen_featured_posts_after…
   however it seems a bit like namespacing to me.
 * Ok So by calling in say a particular template file…
    `do_action('nameMe','Cupid
   made me love');`
 * and then by adding this in the functions.php
 *     ```
       function myCustomFunction($args){
       	echo $args[0];
       }
       add_action( 'nameMe', 'myCustomFunction', 10, 2 );
       ```
   
 * That creates a custom function… Ok
 * There for if I just added this to funcitons.php it would do something
 *     ```
       function myCustomFunction($args){
       	echo $args[0];
       }
       add_action( 'twentyfourteen_featured_posts_after', 'myCustomFunction', 10, 2 );
       ```
   
 * With that in mind, what would be the result if it were a filter?
 *     ```
       function myCustomFunction($args){
       	echo $args[0];
       }
       add_filter( 'twentyfourteen_featured_posts_after', 'myCustomFunction', 10, 2 );
       ```
   
 * There seems to be little difference between filters and functions except that
   an action is a wrapper function for a filter…?
 * Reading this post… [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fliters-vs-actions-from-a-newbe?replies=10](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fliters-vs-actions-from-a-newbe?replies=10)
 * > You would want to use an action where you need to do **something at a certain
   > point in time**… add options to the database or print css or javascript.
   > You should use a filter where you would want to alter the value of some data
   > that WordPress has passed through the apply_filters() function.
 * Basically I would want to use a filter to an already generated piece of content(
   say in a loop) and an action to insert data, do a function that specifically 
   does a new wp_query with different arguments that I set.
 * I guess the advantage of filters is that you are manipulating data that is already
   there and an action has yet to have data applied to it? If my understanding is
   not yet correct please edumicate me.
 * thanks
 * Andi

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘featured_posts_before and featured_posts_after’ is closed to new replies.

 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Andi Lee Davis](https://wordpress.org/support/users/andi-lee-davis/)
 * Last activity: [12 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/featured_posts_before-and-featured_posts_after/#post-4903996)
 * Status: not resolved

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