This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Priority Shortcodes

Description

Ever get annoyed or frustrated by the way TinyMCE+wpautop+do_shortcode wreak havoc on your shortcodes, wrapping <p>s around <div>s, leaving orphan </p>s, and all sorts of craziness? This plugin allows you to specify shortcodes to be processed before those other actions, generating the clean code you expected.

Priority Shortcodes works by adding an action to the_content and widget_text hooks with a higher priority than wpautop and do_shortcode. The result is that those other actions run your shortcode’s final output, rather than trying to guess if it should be wrapped in <p> tags, etc.

The Codex says:

wpautop recognizes shortcode syntax and will attempt not to wrap p or br tags around shortcodes that stand alone on a line by themselves. Shortcodes intended for use in this manner should ensure that the output is wrapped in an appropriate block tag such as <p> or <div>.

But sometimes shortcodes stand on their own on a line, wanting desperately to be wrapped in a paragraph tag, and sometimes they don’t. Like a shortcode that generates a <span> tag with some classes. (Yeah, you might want to use custom TinyMCE styles instead for a simple span.)

Usage

Where you want to process a shortcode with priority, use “[!” at the start. For example: [my-shortcode] becomes [!my-shortcode] and [my-shortcode]Some content.[/my-shortcode] becomes [!my-shortcode]Some content.[/my-shortcode].

Gutenberg

Users of the new WordPress editor, “Gutenberg”, will probably not use Priority Shortcodes within the new editor, but the plugin continues to work in the Classic Editor.

Installation

See the standard installation instructions at WordPress.org or WPBeginner.

I expect developers will copy the code directly into their functions.php files, possibly customizing the string to specify the priority shortcodes.

FAQ

Does this affect all shortcodes?

No.

Should I use this everywhere instead of the normal shortcodes?

No. Only use it on shortcodes that are being messed up.

How does it work?

The plugin adds an action hook to the_content with priority 9, before wpautop and do_shortcode, which run with normal priority 10. The function that runs in our action hook is basically a copy/mashup of do_shortcode() and do_shortcode_tag() with a custom regular expression. That regex pulled using get_shortcode_regex(), so any updates to that expression in core will be respected by this plugin. See shortcodes.php

Why not just change the order wpautop and do_shortcode run in?

That can mess up other shortcodes. Plus, I’ve tried it, and it doesn’t have the result I wanted at all.

Reviews

December 13, 2022
This plugin has a fatal flaw for me so I'm giving it a 1/5, from me. Karma sucks!
Read all 0 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Priority Shortcodes” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Priority Shortcodes” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

2.0.2

  • Tested with WP 5.6
  • Updated README with note about Gutenberg

2.0.1

  • Bumped “Tested up to” version

2.0

  • Changed to more simple [! syntax
  • Added compatibility with text widgets

1.0

  • Initial release