Shortcodes are a way of inserting information into a page, or creating a special effect on a page that isn’t part of the standard WordPress feature set. Shortcodes are enclosed in square brackets as [shortcode] and can sometimes have additional parameters passed, e.g. [shortcode colour=”blue”].

Most of the shortcodes used on this site are simple single entities, but it is also possible to have enclosing shortcodes which act as a wrapper round a piece of text. e.g.

[shortcode]Content to be displayed[/shortcode]

Note that the closing shortcode tag has the same name but starts with a / character.

Here is a complete list of shortcodes supported.

[clearfix]

This shortcode is still supported but is no longer required. You can now use the Additional CSS setting on the last paragraph you want to flow round the picture, as described in Editing Content.

When you insert an image with left or right alignment on your page, the text entered after that image is placed to the side. If there is enough text it will continue to flow past and reverts to normal width again below the image. But what if you only want a small amount of text next to the image and the next item should be below the image? This is where you use the [clearfix] shortcode, which instructs WordPress to start the next item below the ‘floating’ image item. Just add this shortcode in a line on its own after the end of the text that belongs with the image.

[contact]

Used to insert a contact form on your page, as discussed in detail here.

[content-box]

This can be used to add a section highlighted in a coloured box, should you wish to draw attention to it. If an event has to be cancelled you might want to highlight this on your front page.
[content-box type="red"]Meeting cancelled due to snow[/content-box]

Meeting cancelled due to snow

You can select the box colour from red, green, blue, violet, grey or yellow.

NOTE: This feature was added before WordPress 5 was released. The new WordPress block editor allows you to set text colour and background colour for any text item, so the shortcode is largely redundant. However it does add a border to the coloured box, which you may prefer.

[dashicon]

This is used to insert icons, typically phone or email icons, into your page. These icons are taken from the standard WordPress dashicons set. You can view the full set here. Click on an icon on that page to see its name and use that name without the dashicons- prefix.

[dashicon id="phone"] 01217 123456
[dashicon id="email"] info@example.com

01217 123456
info@example.com

[pta_sign_up_sheet]

Insert this shortcode in a page on its own to display sign-up sheets on that page. The same page is displayed for the list of sheets, the list of people signed up and the sign-up form itself. Any text you include on that page will be displayed on all of these pages. You can find out how to set these up on the Sign-up Sheets page.

[responsive-iframe]

This is typically used to display a location map created by Google, although it can also be used for things like Google calendars. The Google embed codes are quite complex, so to avoid the danger of the text being changed inadvertently they are now defined separately in the Settings section (admin only at present) and you only need to use this shortcode to reference them.

The location map for your venue is normally shown using the code

[responsive-iframe id=1 height=400]

Up to 4 different content frames can be defined, id=1 is normally used for the venue map. The content takes the full available width on the page, but you can set the height in pixels.

[table]

This inserts a table created using TablePress. You need to specify which table to insert using the table ID. It is usually easier to do this using the TablePress button in the page editor. Find out more on the Using Tables page.