What I Found Out Today: Bloggers have it so much easier nowadays.
Ok, not today, but I was reminded of it recently just last week, that there was a time when there weren’t any blogging platforms or WYSIWYG editors: if you wanted to publish a blog post, you coded everything from the text, formatting, images, links, and template and would have to upload it to the web via FTP (It’s odd when I run into bloggers that blog for a living that don’t know how to FTP).
I don’t even want to know how many cumulative hours I spent trying to place an image in just the right spot — code, adjust, move, upload it, preview it, and do it again until it was just right. And if I wanted to add a simple custom button? I needed learn how to do it and code that sucker from scratch.
Today? We have WordPress and Tumblr, and creating a blog post is as easy as writing on a Word document. Adding a custom button is unpossibly easy with the Shortcodes Ultimate plugin – which I just discovered a couple weeks ago.
Don’t know what a shortcode is? Shortcodes are visible snippets of text that when inserted, instructs the plugin to perform that function or display an enhancement . For example, if you wanted to insert a blue button using a shortcode, the shortcode may look something like [button blue], but in place of [blue button] you would have [su_button url=”http://stuarte.co/2014/wordpress-shortcodes” target=”blank” style=”flat” background=”#2d36ef” color=”#ffffff” size=”2″ icon_color=”#000000″]blue button[/su_button] when someone viewed the blog post.
The plugin isn’t limited to just buttons, oh not even close. Once installed, Shortcodes Ultimate allows you to insert 50 different types of media, formats, data, content, and galleries with just a few clicks. No need to code. With a few clicks, you can add a:
- Heading
- Tabs
- Button
- Table
- Spoiler
- Divider
- Lightbox
- Google Map
And when applicable, you’re even able to customize the size, color, shape, and design. Here’s some of the shortcodes included in the plugin:
I’m so angry. Do you know how many hours I’ve spent formatting HTML tables in the past? Me either, but it was a lot, dude. It’s ridiculous how disgustingly comprehensive this plugin is — forgive me if I am coming off jaded, but the list above is like reliving a timeline of all my HTML frustrations. And now you can just click a few times to insert it?
[su_button url=”http://www.the-best-web-hosting-service.com/blog/2014/01/ultimateshortcodesreview/” target=”blank” style=”3d” background=”#7bef2d” color=”#000000″ size=”11″ icon_color=”#000000″ desc=” (BTW, I created this using Shortcodes Ultimate)”]Click this huge green button to go to an awesome Shortcodes Ultimate tutorial[/su_button]
