How to Create Your Own WordPress Shortcodes
WordPress doesn't normally allow you to add PHP code to pages or posts. That's for the best: you don't want clients to discover the power of the unlink function! However, you can create custom functions which are executed when a shortcode is encountered within the post text.
Simple shortcodes
Shortcode functions can be added to plugin code or your theme's functions.php file. If it's the latter, I'd recommend creating a separate shortcodes.php file, then adding include('shortcodes.php'); to functions.php.
Here's a basic a€oHello Worlda€¯ example:
function HelloWorldShortcode() { return 'Hello World!
'; } add_shortcode('helloworld', 'HelloWorldShortcode');Enter [helloworld] somewhere within a page or post to output the result of the HelloWorldShortcode() function.
Parameterized shortcodes
The following shortcode function generates a page hierarchy sitemap. Three optional parameters can be passed: a title, the ID of the resulting ul list, and a depth value indicating the number of page navigation levels.
function GenerateSitemap($params = array()) { // default parameters extract(shortcode_atts(array('title' = 'Site map', 'id' = 'sitemap', 'depth' = 2), $params)); // create sitemap $sitemap = wp_list_pages("title_li=&depth=$depth&sort_column=menu_order&echo=0"); if ($sitemap != '') { $sitemap = ($title == '' ? '' : "$title
") . '- $sitemap
A custom sitemap can be added to any page using a shortcode such as [sitemap id='deepmap',depth=5].
BB code shortcode
The final way to add shortcodes uses [bbcode]BB code syntax[/bbcode]:
function StyleText($params, $content = null) { // default parameters extract(shortcode_atts(array('style' = ''), $params)); return '$content"; } add_shortcode('format','StyleText');This function allows the author to embed CSS styles within their article, e.g. [format style="font-size:1.5em;color:#f00;"Important![/format]. Perhaps that's not such a great idea!a€¦
Have you seen any interesting uses for shortcodes within WordPress projects?