An unbelievable community for help and support for WordPress has grown over the years. The WordPress platform keeps improving while not letting itself become slow and overly bloated by features. Things have grown to the point where you can do just about anything using a self hosted WordPress blog.
There is one feature that is built into WordPress that really allows a user to take complete control over the look and layout of their blog or website. They are called shortcodes and are short cuts you can use in your post simply by typing in a few characters.
With just a few characters you can add special effects or additional elements or styling. You can use shortcodes to change the format of your page. The two columns as used on this page are created using shortcodes. You can use shortcodes to add things like tab boxes or image sliders as well.
Why Use Shortcodes?
There are three main reasons why you should use shortcodes: [gn_list style=”arrow”]
- With shortcodes you can easily customize individual pages or posts on your site.
- Be independent of any theme.
- Work much faster than using ‘point and click’ features.
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For example, the quoted and cited text below left was inserted into this post simply by using a shortcode like this:
[cc lang=”text” nowrap=”false”]
You can add interest and color to your post by using shortcodes. For example:
[gn_box title=”This Box Added With a Shortcode” color=”#324D19″]
Using a box shortcode, you can display simple boxes like this. You can include links (Ex: Open Google in a new tab), images, photos or icons or other content.[/gn_box]
In this shortcode section of my site you can check out a number of different examples showing how to use shortcodes and the options that are available.
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