Justin Tadlock on Shortcodes

Excellent article about shortcodes http://justintadlock.com/archives/2011/05/02/dealing-with-shortcode-madness

Well,

for some shortcodes i could agree… especially for those that just add specific css classes to tags… but in any case we intensively use complex shortcodes for content generation and so in any case, at the end, switching theme you will still have dead shortcodes in your pages/posts…

My 2c

It’s a good thing Justin Tadlock doesn’t have to pay his mortgage by competing for sales on TF.

I have to believe that anyone smart enough to use WordPress has the capacity to learn how to use the class attribute within an HTML element. It’s possible that I’m wrong, but I have a lot of faith in my fellow WordPress users.

duotive said

I have to believe that anyone smart enough to use WordPress has the capacity to learn how to use the class attribute within an HTML element. It’s possible that I’m wrong, but I have a lot of faith in my fellow WordPress users.

– Wrong, easy click, click, click instructions are hard. I would prefer to use classes and to see the content in the visual editor too but would be harder for the customers and will get many more requests and we already do.

+1 … Ya I’d have to disagree also. So many buyers love these little shortcodes. I put a million shortcodes and still have people asking me why I don’t have this or that shortcode. Besides, it’s not like they’re required to use them. I agree with the post to an extent as a developer working with themes, but think it’s a little dramatic.

ThemeBlvd said
It’s a good thing Justin Tadlock doesn’t have to pay his mortgage by competing for sales on TF.

=))) totally right =)))

I have to agree with Justin, from a developers perspective the lock-in effect has a harming affect on the theme community. Simply selling your theme together with a shortcode plugin would be a better idea, so the user can enable/disable it how he sees fit. And every body gets the best of both worlds.

I think he has a valid point. but making them out of classes isn’t the way to go. I think a plugin would be a much better solution.

CyberShot said
I think he has a valid point. but making them out of classes isn’t the way to go. I think a plugin would be a much better solution.

Why not use classes? Seems logical to me…

because if you made a plugin, then you could create buttons to add to the editor and they would always be there. It would also make it easier to move those styles over to another directory. Could you imagine trying to tell a customer what to look for in a css file? Plugins are just easier to use.