Posted by WordPress shortcodes are the handiest tool to add posts, pictures, social media feeds, or any video to your WordPress site. However, despite many advantages, it is often ignored and could not get the due diligence because of inadequate knowledge amongst many users.
Let’s start with the basics.
What are WordPress Shortcodes?
These are the independent code snippets inserted into your blog post or web page to plug the dynamic features such as an array of galleries, videos, or social media feeds. Everyone can use WordPress shortcodes, be it a novice user who is new to WordPress or an experienced techie who can provide outstanding web designing services.
To know the basics of website building on WordPress, you need to learn about these shortcodes. These are written as a text with [XYZ] syntax, which anybody can recognize visually. After publishing your post with shortcode added to it, you will see the dynamic content on your web page in feeds, galleries, videos, or whatever you have written in that code.
How to add a shortcode?
To add, you can directly insert it into the page or post using a WordPress text editor. Shortcode is not an integral part of the WordPress theme or plugin; still, you can post it in visual or text mode.
Additionally, you can insert the shortcode in the widget area with the help of a text widget. The process is simple when the text widget takes it’s position then the shortcode is pasted to the widget’s text editor. It then displays everywhere to the widget’s location.
Some external sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and LinkedIn provide their own shortcodes that can be directly copied and pasted to your WordPress website. This activity will help you display the feed and boards of these social media handles and thus increasing the site and visitor engagement.
However, you will get some shortcodes in WordPress relevant to the themes and expand its features to a greater extent. For example, to display the photographs, you will get a slider shortcode to view the selected images.
Best way to use shortcodes
1.Limit the use of shortcodes
Using shortcodes saves your time and simplifies the way to build a website. However, you should limit your use because you need to spend more time updating and tracking a large number of shortcodes.
These are manually added in the WordPress site’s selected areas to enhance the features of the pages, blogs, and websites. Keeping shortcodes minimum will help in quick tracking and easy maintenance. And if necessary to add more shortcodes then install the WordPress plugin to use them.
2.Track the installed shortcodes
To track a large number of shortcodes, you can download and use the plugin Shortcodes Finder from WordPress.org. Adding these shortcodes manually to the sites creates trouble to track, and hence the plugin solves the purpose to find it whenever required. With the help of Shortcodes Finder, you can track, see the content and also delete it whenever needed.
3.Get default WordPress shortcodes
WordPress provides you some essential shortcodes which can incorporate images, videos, audio, and other critical elements. With these basic shortcode’s availability, you can add functions quickly on your website with a text editor’s help.
4.Updated your site? Check the shortcodes
You need to update your WordPress site and themes as per the latest updates, but updating the website might affect the shortcodes. If it doesn’t display the content correctly, then you will have to delete the shortcode and reinstall the latest version.
5.Adding parameters for shortcodes
You can add customization to the shortcodes to give more clarity about the post. For example, you can add parameters in the [XYZ] box, such as [Images = 3], which shows the 3 number of images in the gallery. If you are comfortable with a bit of coding, you can specify the shortcodes even more.
6.Shortcode plugin installation
Install the plugins Shortcodes Ultimate and WordPress Shortcode; they will help you search for shortcodes and create a customized one. Additionally, you can add approximately 50 shortcodes on your websites.
With the help of WordPress plugins you can customize the shortcodes as per your choice and needs. Also, you can change the code and set the parameters as per your customization.
Conclusion
You can get some of the outstanding web designing services available around if you do not have sufficient knowledge and experience using the shortcodes efficiently. However, you can try your hands over it as it’s just an array of code that enhances your website with galleries, videos, photos, and social media feeds