There might be a few reasons why you might want to do this. For example, you might be providing a fallback for a certain shortcode, and you don’t want to overwrite it. Whatever the reason, just drop this snippet into your plugin code:

… and then use the new shortcode_exists( $shortcode_name ) function. Pass a shortcode name as the first parameter, and it will return true if it has been registered, or false if not.

The function_exists() wrapper around the code will make sure that your code doesn’t break if WordPress one day decides to include this function in core, or another plugin is using this code. You might also like to namespace the function or include it in a class.

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1. Bookmarks Shortcode plugin updated to version 2.0!
2. Bookmarks Shortcode
3. What WordPress shortcodes should be used for

One of the best services for doing so is explain xkcd, a wiki where anyone can submit and contribute to explanations.  However, it becomes tedious reading multiple comics over at xckd.com and then looking up their explanations on explain xkcd.

I created a bookmarklet that sits in your bookmark bar or menu, and if you click it when you’re visiting a comic over at xkcd.com, it will take you to the explanation.

To use, create a new bookmark and paste the following code instead of the bookmark URL:

javascript:location.href="http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title="+window.location.pathname.replace(/^/|/$/g, "");

Next time you’re visiting xkcd.com, click on the bookmark and you should be redirected directly to the explanation for the comic you’re viewing. Enjoy!

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3. Hello World!

So when should shortcodes be used? My answer: never for static content. For example, if a shortcode named [notice] resulted in a <div id="notice"> which is then styled by the theme, then you’re doing it wrong. An example for a good use of shortcodes might be to output the current year. If we were making a copyright notice like:

Copyright 2013 ACME, inc

… we would need to go and update this notice every year. To resolve this, we can create a shortcode that uses PHP’s date() function to output the current year:

Copyright [current_year] ACME, inc

This is an example of what shortcodes really should be used for: bringing dynamic content to static posts. Shortcodes shouldn’t be used by themes (except in rare cases), and definitely shouldn’t replace HTML or CSS classes.

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3. Code Snippets plugin released

Twenty Thirteen will be the next WordPress default theme. It is scheduled to be bundled with WordPress 3.6. Twenty Thirteen boasts bright, bold and beautiful colors, perfect for a personal blogging site.

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I found one plugin which I liked the idea of: BuddyPress Humanity adds a question to the BuddyPress registration form which you need to set and change from the WordPress dashboard. I thought that the idea of adding a simple question or maths sum to the signup form was a great idea, but I didn’t want to go and change it every day.

That’s why I wrote BuddyPress Security Check, which requires users to answer simple maths sum adding or subtracting two randomly generated numbers between 0 and 10 inclusive. The code that handles adding the question to the form and validating it is based on that of BuddyPress Humanity, but the rest is completely rewritten.

Following my own personal practices and philosophy of writing plugins, BuddyPress Security Check has no options page, requires no configuration, and does not store any values in the database. Activate the plugin when it is needed; deactivate it when it is not.

I’ve used this plugin on my BuddyPress site since it was written  and have received virtually no spam users in that time. @magichew on Twitter reports similar success:

https://twitter.com/magichew/status/301599724346155008

So what are you waiting for? You can download BuddyPress Security Check from WordPress.org, or contribute to its development on GitHub.

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• Intel Core i7-3632QL Processor / 2.20 GHz
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 / AMD Radeon HD 7570M, 2GB
• 14″ / 1600 X 900 display with multitouch
• approx. 750 GB storage (hard disk drive)
• 4 GB RAM
• DVD and BluRay burner and reader
• Windows 8 64-bit OS

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3. Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to 2013!

I’m always looking for ways to speed up my sites. One of the best ways to do that is use a content delivery network (CDN). MaxCDN is one such content delivery service that hosts your static files to make downloading your website content fast and seamless, taking the load off your server completely!

Tom McFarlin is hosting a giveaway on his blog where there are ten (10!) 1TB accounts for MaxCDN to be won. The prize in drawn in 5 days, so hurry up and enter before it’s too late!

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