HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the most widely used markup language today. Tags, elements and angle bracket with a bit of help from CSS forms the building block of all that you see around on the World Wide Web.

It has been nearly 20 years since HTML started defining how we 'see' the web. Now, it's on the verge of its fifth major revision HTML5. From its first avatar to its fifth, the web itself has been transformed. HTML5 is an attempt to meet current needs which is heavily based around dynamic and multimedia rich content. But how will it change the way we look and work with the web?

The web of today is increasingly interactive and media rich. Applications are moving online. HTML5 covers all of these needs by introducing ways to embed videos and audio, draw simple graphics, work with apps offline; do all these without plugins, and of course, do it all faster than before.

It is after all a standard. Thus, it's nigh impossible to sweat the details in a few lines. So here are ten resources that give you an insight on HTML5. Let's get to know it, because we all might be using it soon.

WTF is HTML5

Research group Focus breaks down the latest specification and gives it straight up as a simple to understand infographic. Within ten minutes, you will get a helicopter view of what HTML5 is all about and why we should care.

Dive Into HTML5

Written by Mark Pilgrim, it's a hand-picked look at select features of HTML5. It's put together in the conversational style of the For Dummies' series. If you want to grasp the basics, this is a must read.

And there's Professor Markup' to guide you along with answers to common queries. Each chapter is supported by demos and examples. But do check the mentioned supported browser(s) before trying them out.

HTML5Doctor

At HTML5Doctor.com, you have articles that are meant to help you hit the ground running. For example, using the very first article, you can set your webpage to be recognized as HTML5 by browsers. The fourth post helps out with designing a blog with HTML5.

The HTML5 blog also has a Q&A section, where you can upload your questions. Some of the answers come on the homepage as Your Questions Answered' posts.

HTML5Rocks

This HTML5 web resource asks that you be well versed in coding. If you are, there are a few tutorials that help you understand how HTML5 features can be coded. You can experiment with HTML5 at the Playground and even reuse some of the code samples in your own project.

The tutorials are few but comprehensive. Each is also tagged with the icon of the browsers that meet the HTML5 feature requirements.

HTML5games

HTML5 is giving Adobe a few headaches because it promises to do away with Flash (at least for some apps). Will HTML5 prove as effective as online games as the Flash based games we have become used to? Check it out for yourself by playing the HTML5 games that are hosted on this site.

You can also read a brief mention of this HTML5 games resource in our directory.

HTML5 Readiness

All browsers are readying themselves for HTML5. The half wheel on this site is a visual indicator of each browser's groundwork so far for HTML5 and CSS3. You can mouseover the 28 features and gauge the stage from the color coded spokes.

From the looks of it, Safari and Chrome are more down the path than the others.

HTML5 Element Reference Table

Periodic Table of the Elements, a project by Josh Duck is a quirky look at the 104 HTML5 elements (and 2 proposed elements) using the layout of a periodic table. Clicking on each cell brings up a brief description with additional references.

You can also read a brief mention of this resource in our directory.

HTML5 Test

At a glance you can tell your (browser's) score when matched up against HTML5 ready features. As soon as the website loads up, the score from a maximum of 300 gets displayed. You get bonus points if the support extends beyond what the HTML5 specification might lay down.

The scores are also color coded which indicate anything between what's great and what's not available on your browser.

HTML5 Gallery

HTML5gallery.com parades other websites that are using HTML5 in some form or the other. You can click on the thumbnail and reach the websites on view. It is also a learning platform to see how web developers are implementing HTML5.

Each website profiled has a small note that explains how an HTML5 element has been used to design the website.

YouTube HTML5 Beta

The Video' element is touted as one of the bestselling points of HTML5. You can test it out on YouTube by opting to use the HTML5 player instead of the Flash player for most videos. Your tryouts will also tell you how your current browser is coping with HTML5 videos. Do read the Notes section to note the finer points on the beta effort from YouTube.

Everything says its exciting days ahead. These ten websites on HTML5 are just the early starters of a breed that's going to explode soon. Hopefully, they will help to put you in the right element to work with HTML5.

Image: justinsonmia

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The Red Bull Illume contest gathers the cream of action sports photographers together for an exhibition and awards ceremony. Over the past year, nearly 23,000 images were submitted for consideration, the top 50 of which can now be seen at a special gallery at Trinity College in Dublin. But if you can't make it over to Ireland, check them out here!

Fifty-three judges from around the world voted to find the photos that stood out most for their composition, creativity and artistic flair. The judges voted for ten category winners and one overall winner. American lensman Chris Burkard was awarded the overall prize for his incredible landscape surf shot (the featured image above) taking away a Leica S2 camera and lenses that in his words is probably worth more than my house! (the body alone costs 20,000).

The open-air exhibition runs until September 11 and is free to the public. Why Illume? I hear you ask. The top 50 images are mounted on lightboxes and were revealed at the ceremony under cover of darkness (pretty cool eh?). And every evening after sunset, the images illuminate the front square of the university.

Category Winners:

Experimental Daniel Grund (GER)
New Creativity Eric Berger (CAN)
SanDisk Sequence Miguel Lopez-Virgen (MEX)
Energy Stuart Gibson (AUS)
Illumination Chris Burkhard (USA)
Playground Tim Korbmacher (GER)
Culture Vincent Perraud (FRA)
Spirit Adam Kokot (POL)
Wings Marcel Lmmerhirt (GER)
Close up Nathan Smith (AUS)

Overall Winner: Chris Burkhard (USA)

The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects.

This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.

Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution.

According to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 95 percent of passenger travel in America is made by car, motorcycle and truck on our highways now.

Expanding highway capacity and overhauling busted roads with more durable and sustainable materials can prevent some traffic jams. But even highway professionals advocate building efficient, intercity, high speed trains and upgrading our freight rail systems.

Wireless companies like Groundlink and D-Link could win business rigging new high speed trains with internet service and related equipment.

Cities that recently won government funding for their high speed passenger rail projects include: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Battle Creek, Michigan among others along the Detroit to Chicago route.

Feds promised the biggest piece of the budget in their national high speed rail transit program earlier this year to large-scale efforts in Florida and California that would connect Tampa and Orlando with 168 MPH trains, and Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running up to 200 MPH.

The Room adventure game is tearing us apart, Lisa originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

With Muslims being given a red light by much of the country in their attempt to build a community center two blocks from Ground Zero, many are asking what is appropriate for this sacred ground. Bars are good, strip clubs okay, mosques built at least thirty years ago tolerable, but what about a church run by an outspoken opponent of gays, Muslims, Mormons, and Democratic presidents elected in 2008?

Pastor Bill Keller of Florida will start preaching from his temporary 9/11 Christian Center home at a nearby Marriott this Sunday, but is this project not gaining attention merely because it has Christian as part of its name? Perhaps his biases seem eerily familiar from recent political debates, but 9/11 families could be a bit offended by Pastor Bill Keller's website program offering a ten percent cut of friends' donations to the center as a moneymaking opportunity. Capitalism may be a particularly American virtue, but is this the picture of the US we want to broadcast across the world?

Full story at Salon.

More on religion.

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image designboom

full credits:

Figure-Ground Illusion Posters of the Day: Spiderman vs. Green Goblin / Batman vs. Penguin by Simon C. Page.

From Page's ongoing Hero and Villain series.

SvG prints available here. BvP here.

[superpunch.]

If you have a lot of windows open at once, you may find yourself doing a lot of rearranging. If you want to keep an eye on your frontmost window, though, you can move windows without focusing them.

File this into "small-but-awesome-tips-we-never-knew-about" category: it turns out that if you hold command and click on a background window's title bar, you can drag it around the screen without giving it focus. It's pretty useful if you're watching a video in your main window, or just want to check on something in a background window without clicking a bunch of times to re-focus all the right windows. Check out the video for a demonstration.

Filed under: Videos, News / Politics, Television

Seen the wacky CGI animations of Tiger Woods, Justin Bieber and the Jersey Shore crew? I talked to the Taiwanese animation studio behind them and discovered what they're all about.

The animated shorts of Next Media Animation have gotten hugely popular across the globe over the last year. The studio is able to churn out these computer animations within hours of the story breaking. Remember when that Jet Blue employee went postal and slid down the inflatable slide? NMA created the following video within a day to illustrate the incident for its Taiwanese audience. The video has since earned over 600K views on YouTube.

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Many an architect has dreamed up visionary plans for city centers, but few have actually seen their designs come to fruition in a real live urban setting. And while many such unbuilt concepts are technically viable, others are wacky, fanciful or downright bizarre. These 13 retro urban design ideas for the future, from perfectly symmetrical egalitarian communities to the egotistical demands of a deranged dictator, will probably never become reality and in many cases, we're better off that way.

Gillette's Metropolis

(images via: io9)

Before his name was inextricably connected to safety razors, King Camp Gillette had a utopian vision for the future which revolved around a waterfall-powered tiered city he dubbed Metropolis'. All residents of this imagined city would have access to the same amenities including rooftop gardens in the perfectly round, precisely divided multi-functional buildings in which they would live, work, play and eat. Like many of Gillette's ideas, the design never went anywhere, but it's notably similar to many very modern 21st-century concepts for sustainable urban centers.

Broadacre City

(images via: mediaarchitecture.at)

Like Gillette's Metropolis, Broadacre City was meant to be an urban utopia. But when renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright imagined the picture-perfect society of tomorrow, he saw not highly compact and efficient high-rises, but sprawling self-sustainable homesteads. Originally conceived in 1932, Broadacre City puts each homeowner in a self-built single-family home on an entire acre of land brimming with gardens. Complete with multiple cars per family, it would almost be an accurate prediction of future suburbia if not for the airplane in every front yard.

Atomurbia

(image via: io9)

If giving each and every family in America an acre of land seems impossible, imagine what life would be like if Atomurbia' had come to pass. This concept, published in a 1947 issue of Life magazine, detailed how to atomic bomb-proof America by spreading the population across the land in a geometric grid and relocating all industry into underground structures so that any single bomb would do a minimum of damage. The whole plan would have cost a measly 5 trillion dollars in today's currency, and the authors atomic scientists from Chicago thought it could be pulled off within a decade.

Hotel Attraction

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Antoni Gaudi's architecture defines Barcelona, Spain even today with its fluid curves, reflective surfaces and organic shapes but it would stick out like a sore thumb in the comparatively staid cityscape of Manhattan. Perhaps that's what he had in mind for Hotel Attraction', commissioned in 1908 and also known as the Grand Hotel. The rounded, spaceship-like form would have risen in the exact spot where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were later built, but the idea was ultimately abandoned. Gaudi's unrealized design was actually considered as a possibility for the Ground Zero memorial after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Welthauptstadt

(images via: wikimedia commons)

We all know that Adolf Hitler had many an ambitious plan that (thankfully) never came to pass but few are aware of Welthauptstadt' (German for World Capital'), the Fuhrer's design for a new Berlin to be constructed after his expected victory in World War II. Taking elements from other empires around the world, Hitler imagined a broad Avenue of Victory' down the center as well as his very own Arch of Triumph'. A test structure constructed in 1938 to determine whether Berlin's marshy ground could have even held up such heavy Romanesque architecture (verdict: nope) still stands today.

Palace of Soviets

(image via: adlhochcreative)

The Palace of Soviets would have been the world's tallest structure at 100 meters high and crowned with a brightly lit hammer and sickle as a monument to Lenin on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior, if only the Nazis hadn't invaded in 1941, putting a stop to construction. Its steel frame was disassembled for use in fortifications and bridges, and its foundations served as the world's largest open-air swimming pool for a while before 1995 when the whole thing was filled in so that the cathedral could be rebuilt.

Ville Contemporaine

(images via: tommatthew)

The architect known as Le Corbusier was an essential figure in the development of what we now know as modern architecture, and his many theoretical urban design projects aimed to make life better for residents of cramped cities. Displeased with the chaos of big cities, Le Corbusier designed Ville Contemporaine' as an orderly home to three million people where housing, industry and recreation all occupied distinct areas connected by roads that emphasized the use of personal vehicles for transportation.

Seward's Success

(images via: matthewspencer)

If it was Seward's Folly to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire in the first place, perhaps Seward's Success a huge climate-controlled, glass-enclosed city for 40,000 people could have made up for it. Or not. Proposed in 1968 and nixed in 1972, this unbuilt community was dreamed up after the discovery of oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska when developers imagined droves of people coming to the area. The crowning jewel of the perpetually 68-degree dome would have been a 20-story Alaskan Petroleum Center, surrounded by housing, offices, retail space and an indoor sports arena.

Triton City

(images via: a place to stand)

If not for a certain tell-tale 1960s aesthetic, Buckminster Fuller's Triton City' could easily fit among today's designs for floating eco-friendly cities. The futurist, architect and inventor was ahead of his time as usual when he imagined this tetrahedronal metropolis for Tokyo Bay, a seastead for up to 6,000 residents. Fuller wrote about the possibility of desalinating and recirculating seawater in many useful and non-polluting ways and using materials from obsolete buildings on land, which were hardly popular ideas at the time.

Future New York, The City of Skyscrapers

(images via: io9)

By 1925, many of New York City's skyscrapers were already present, but futurists of the time envisioned not only a great deal more but a sort of aerial civilization complete with elevated train platforms and perhaps a rather unsafe number of aircraft flying around all at once.

New York City's Dream Airport

(image via: ptak science books)

All the airplanes in that 1925 postcard would definitely require a monumental airport in New York City, and what better location than right smack in midtown Manhattan? This concept for New York City's Dream Airport featured an astonishingly large and some say ugly runway platform. But for all of the prime real estate that this monstrosity would have devoured, it seems as if it could only handle a handful of planes at a time with absolutely zero margin of error, sending errant planes straight into Central Park or the East River.

Slumless, Smokeless Cities

(image via: bigthink.com)

How do you build a city so egalitarian that slums are eliminated entirely, and nobody ever has to breathe in pollution? Sir Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city movement, believed that a careful layout with six satellite garden cities connected via canals to a densely populated central city would do the trick. Thoughtfully, the design included specially designated spaces for Eplileptic Farms, Homes for Waifs, Homes for Inebriates and an insane asylum.

Boozetown

(images via: modern drunkard magazine)

Just imagine a resort entirely centered on the culture of alcohol. A boozer's paradise built expressly to facilitate drinking and the good times that naturally follow. Where the bars, clubs and liquor stores never close. Mel Johnson's Boozetown' was an entirely sincere proposal with street names like Gin Lane and Bourbon Boulevard that would have begun as a resort town in Middle America and eventually expanded into a full-sized adults-only city with permanent housing and its own suburbs. After many obsessed years of struggling for financing, Johnson gave up on his dream in 1960 and died in a mental hospital in 1962.

Filed under: Design Tips, web 2.0

I have recently been experimenting with CSS3 box properties for my own personal site. I was thrilled with how easy it was to create a box with rounded corners, some shading and a border - it was really trivial.

That was even before I found CSS3 Playground. Had I found this neat little tool before, I would not have had to hand-code a single line of text.

Like so many other showcases and playgrounds, it's basically a canvas with a bunch of sliders. The sliders let you visually control a CSS div. You can set a ton of CSS3 properties, and watch how they affect the div in real time. Skew it, rotate, zoom in, play with borders and shadow, rounded corners - it's all there, and it's very accessible and fun to play with.

The bottom pane of the window has all of the style declarations you've visually set, both in JavaScript syntax and as CSS. You can just play with the sliders to get it to look just right and then copy/paste it into your own site. Neat!

[Thanks, Yaara!]

CSS3 Playground lets you experiment with new CSS features and generates code originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the world's most controversial websites now has one of the world's coolest datacenters.

Andy Greenberg at Forbes has picked up on a Norwegian report that Wikileaks servers are now hosted in Sweden's Pionen datacentre, housed inside a Cold War-era underground nuclear bunker. 30 metres below Stockholm, it reportedly has a single entrance with half-metre thick metal doors.

The move has been initiated by the Swedish Pirate Party, who began looking after Wikileaks' hosting this month. We have long admired Wikileaks, the Pirate Party's Rick Falkvinge told Norway's VG, claiming that as his party is hosting Wikileaks, an attack on Wikileaks is also regarded as an attack on a political party.

Moving to a nuclear bunker is probably little more than a symbolic move. The company repsonsible for the bunker told Forbes that its location was A kind of metaphor for its commitment to resist any sort of intrusion, physical or legal.

Wikileaks has gone from being a little-known website to headline news over the past few weeks. Its high profile Afghanistan leak made an impact around the world and has resulted in calls for its closure, while founder Julian Assange has claimed to be the victim of a dirty tricks' campaign after allegations were made about his private life recently.

All this attention isn't likely to die down any time soon. Gossip blog Gawker has today launched WikileaksLeaks.org in an attempt to rake up stories about the little-discussed internal operations at the organisation. Among the stories its looking for are Documents relating to Julian Assange's Swedish sexual molestation case: police reports, affidavits, etc. and Financial information: Who supports Wikileaks? How much money do they receive in donations and grants? What does Wikileaks do with this money? How is the money managed?

Original title and link for this post: Wikileaks now hosted from an underground nuclear bunker

WordPress shortcodes are used frequently in plugins and themes as a way to achieve extra functionality, without the need to modify template files. You just type the shortcode word right into your post. Some plugins and themes use them to add event calendars, some for making announcements, while others use them for inserting contact forms.

Simply, WP shortcodes are awesome.

However, what if you're a theme / plugin developer wishing to use them for your next great product, but you have no idea where to start? We're going to fix that in this tutorial.

1 Overview Exactly Where We are Going

We will start out by looking at the basic ways that we can use WP shortcodes, then we will move onto some more advanced tricks. After the usage sections, I'm going to show you some examples of real-world shortcodes, followed by even more ideas / references of what you could do with them.

2 Getting Into the Basics

The first you thing you should always do when working with something WordPress, is check the WordPress Codex. It's a great reference and starting point.

Shortcodes, like just about everything else in WordPress, can be created in the functions.php file, or from within your plugin file if you're developing a plugin.

Let's start simple by making a shortcode that we can use to add additional styles to some text.

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function extra_style_shortcode( $atts, $content = null ) {
   return '<span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">' . $content . '</span>';
}
add_shortcode('extra-style', 'extra_style_shortcode');

This is a very simple example that serves almost no purpose, but easily illustrates the basics of shortcode creation. It allows us to do something like this in our WP posts/pages:

[extra-style]Hello World![/extra-style]

and have it outputted like this:

Hello World!

So what's happening? It's simple, we're simply telling WordPress to put all of the text inside of the [ ] . . . [/ ] into a variable called $content, then outputting $content inside of a span tag that has some simple inline styling applied to it.

Okay, that was easy, now let's get into something a little more complex. This time we'll give the ability to define the color of the text using attributes.

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function extra_style_shortcode( $atts, $content = null ) {
    extract(shortcode_atts(array(
		"color" => 'blue',
	), $atts));   
   return '<span style="color: ' . $color . '; text-decoration: underline;">' . $content . '</span>';
}
add_shortcode('extra-style', 'extra_style_shortcode');

Now we can do this:

[extra-style color=red]Hello World![/extra-style]

and we'll see: Hello World!

or:

[extra-style color=orange]Hello World![/extra-style]

and we'll see: Hello World!.

This example uses this bit of code

    extract(shortcode_atts(array(
		"color" => 'blue',
	), $atts));

to extract the information inputted by the user for the variable color. We have also defined a default color of blue in case no color is defined.

Again, this example is pretty much useless, but its simplicity makes it very easy to understand.

Let's get just a little bit more complex before moving on.

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function extra_style_shortcode( $atts, $content = null ) {
    extract(shortcode_atts(array(
	"color" => 'blue',
        "size" => '14px',
        "padding" => '0px',
	), $atts));   
   return '<span style="color: ' . $color . '; padding: ' . $padding . '; font-size: ' . $size . '; text-decoration: underline;">' . $content . '</span>';
}
add_shortcode('extra-style', 'extra_style_shortcode');

By using a shortcode like this within a block of text:

[extra-style color=purple size=18px padding=5px]Hello World![/extra-style]

we could see something like this:

Elementum odio? Sed, Hello World! proin pulvinar eros nascetur, massa urna aliquam turpis elit, adipiscing mauris montes ac, vel lacus placerat in adipiscing ridiculus rhoncus.

Well that's enough of the pointless examples; let's look at some real shortcode examples.

3 Making an Information Box

This shortcode example will let you include a nice little message box at the top of your post to help catch readers' eyes.

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function box_shortcode( $atts, $content = null )
{
    extract( shortcode_atts( array(
      'color' => 'yellow',
      'size' => 'medium',
      ), $atts ) );
 
      return '
		<style type="text/css">
		.shortcode_box {
			padding: 2px 4px;
			border: 1px solid #ccc;
		}
		.yellow {
			background: #ffd149;
			color: #666;
		}
		.blue {
			background: #a0c5ef;
			color: #333;
		}
		.gray {
			background: #f0f0f0;
			color: #333;
		}
		</style>
 
      <div class="shortcode_box ' . $size . ' ' .  $color . '">' . $content . '</div>';
 
}
add_shortcode('box', 'box_shortcode');

Now we can use our box shortcode to produce something like this

by using this shortcode:

[box color=yellow]This is a message box with important information you should read.[/box]

By changing the color variable, we can have different colors of boxes:

With a little more CSS, we could also control the size of the box, but I'll leave that to you.

4 Create a Download Button

The process for creating a download button is very similar to creating a message box: we simplu wrap the content of the button inside of a div with some special CSS3 styles applied to it.

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function button_shortcode( $atts, $content = null )
{
    extract( shortcode_atts( array(
      'color' => 'blue',
      'size' => 'medium',
      ), $atts ) );
 
      return '
		<style type="text/css">
		.shortcode_button {
			padding: 2px 8px;
			border: 1px solid #ccc;
			border-radius: 10px;
			-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
			-moz-border-radius: 10px;
		}
		.black {
			background: #ffd149;
			background: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#636363), to(#332F2F));
			background: -moz-linear-gradient(19% 75% 90deg,#332F2F, #636363);
			color: #f0f0f0;
			border-top-color: #1c1c1c;
			border-left-color: #1c1c1c;
			border-right-color: #525252;
			border-bottom-color: #525252;
		}
		.blue {
			background: #a0c5ef;
			background: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#508BC7), to(#203F75));
			background: -moz-linear-gradient(19% 75% 90deg,#203F75, #508BC7);
			color: #f0f0f0;
			border-top-color: #023778;
			border-left-color: #023778;
			border-right-color: #26609e;
			border-bottom-color: #26609e;
		}
 
		.large	{
			width: 200px;
		}
		.medium	{
			width: 120px;
		}
		.small	{
			width: 80px;
		}
		</style>
 
      <div class="shortcode_button ' . $size . ' ' .  $color . '">' . $content . '</div>';
 
}
add_shortcode('button', 'button_shortcode');

We can display our button by using:

[button color=black size=medium]<a href="#">Download</a>[/button]

which will give us:

In order to control the size or color of the button, all we have to do is create a CSS class with the same name as the value we input for our size / color variables. For example, if we do size=large in our shortcode, we need a CSS class called large in our stylesheet. You can see I have included extra styles in my above example to illustrate some possible options.

5 Buttons and Boxes Together

Shortcodes are great because they also let us combine them to a result like:

by using a shortcode like:

[box color=blue]Porta ultricies. Amet odio amet, pellentesque elementum adipiscing sagittis enim, eu, proin placerat sed pid cum? Dictumst turpis integer. Adipiscing, porttitor scelerisque! Lorem turpis porttitor.
 
Integer in, odio mattis ac! Nascetur augue odio in risus, arcu nunc, phasellus ultrices lectus velit, et tincidunt tristique. Integer vel pulvinar purus magnis.
 
[button color=black size=small]<a href="#">Download[/button][/box]

There is one small hitch, though. By default, WordPress does not allow you to embed shortcodes within other shortcodes. In order to get around that, we have to add a line to our functions.php or main plugin file:

add_filter('the_content', 'do_shortcode');

This will make WordPress process both sets of shortcodes.

6 Show Related Posts

This is a really handy shortcode we can use to display a list of posts related to the current post by comparing tags.

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function related_posts_shortcode( $atts ) {
	extract(shortcode_atts(array(
	    'limit' => '5',
	), $atts));
 
	global $wpdb, $post, $table_prefix;
 
	if ($post->ID) {
		$retval = '<ul>';
 		// Get tags
		$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
		$tagsarray = array();
		foreach ($tags as $tag) {
			$tagsarray[] = $tag->term_id;
		}
		$tagslist = implode(',', $tagsarray);
 
		// Do the query
		$q = "SELECT p.*, count(tr.object_id) as count
			FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy AS tt, $wpdb->term_relationships AS tr, $wpdb->posts AS p WHERE tt.taxonomy ='post_tag' AND tt.term_taxonomy_id = tr.term_taxonomy_id AND tr.object_id  = p.ID AND tt.term_id IN ($tagslist) AND p.ID != $post->ID
				AND p.post_status = 'publish'
				AND p.post_date_gmt < NOW()
 			GROUP BY tr.object_id
			ORDER BY count DESC, p.post_date_gmt DESC
			LIMIT $limit;";
 
		$related = $wpdb->get_results($q);
 		if ( $related ) {
			foreach($related as $r) {
				$retval .= '
	<li><a title="'.wptexturize($r->post_title).'" href="'.get_permalink($r->ID).'">'.wptexturize($r->post_title).'</a></li>
';
			}
		} else {
			$retval .= '
	<li>No related posts found</li>
';
		}
		$retval .= '</ul>
';
		return $retval;
	}
	return;
}
add_shortcode('related_posts', 'related_posts_shortcode');

We can show the related posts by using:

[related_posts]

Credit goes to Blue Anvil for this shortcode.

7 Drop Caps With a Shortcode

Drop caps are pretty and make your articles look really nice. They can really add some nice detail to post and make your site stand out above the rest.

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function dropcap($atts, $content = null) {
	return '
<div class="dropcap">'.$content.'</div>
;';
}
add_shortcode('dropcap', 'dropcap');

The CSS:

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.dropcap {
display:block;
float:left;
font-size:50px;
line-height:40px;
margin:0 5px 0 0;
}

Use it with:

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]auris ut lectus erat. In ...

Credit for this shortcode goes to TutToaster.

8 Custom Post Type Query

Let's say that you have set up a custom post type called News and you wish to display all posts inside that custom post type on a page called Articles. You could do it with the code below:

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function news_shortcode()
{
	//The Query
	query_posts('post_type=news');
	//The Loop
	if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
		echo	'<h3><a href="'; echo the_permalink(); echo '">'; echo the_title(); echo '</a></h3>';
		echo the_excerpt();
	endwhile; else:
	endif;
 
	//Reset Query
	wp_reset_query();
}
add_shortcode('news', 'news_shortcode');

Then display the news posts on your Articles page by using this shortcode:

[news]

9 Display Posts from Category on Page

Very similar to the shortcode example above, we can also display limited number of posts from within a particular category using a shortcode like this:

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function category_shortcode( $atts )
{
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
	    'limit' => '5',
            'category' => '',
	), $atts));
	//The Query
	query_posts('category=' . $id . 'posts_per_page=' . $limit);
	//The Loop
	if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
		echo	'<h3><a href="'; echo the_permalink(); echo '">'; echo the_title(); echo '</a></h3>';
		echo the_excerpt();
	endwhile; else:
	endif;
 
	//Reset Query
	wp_reset_query();
}
add_shortcode('category', 'category_shortcode');

You can list the posts using:

[category id=# limit=5]

Just replace # with the ID of the category you wish to display.

10 Great Examples of Other Possible Shortcodes

I've shown you a few examples, both of my own and other's creation, now let me give you even more examples of awesome things you could do.

Joen Asmussen of NoScope.com created a really nifty little shortcode to make a Google PDF Viewer.

Check it out here

Jean Baptiste, of WP-Recipes created a shortcode to display a ReTweet or TweetMeme buttons in your posts. Find it here.

Justin Tadlock made a great plugin that turns all (or most) WordPress template tags into shortcodes so that they can be used within the post editor. Download the Plugin.

A few weeks ago I wrote a shortcode plugin of my own (sorry, couldn't leave myself out!). It's a shortcode utility plugin that allows you to insert a variety of message boxes and web buttons via shortcodes (similar to some of the examples I've used above). Check out WP Utility Shortcodes.

11 Some More Ideas

• Use shortcodes for displaying contact forms
• use shortcodes for displaying a Google map
• Shortcodes to display author bios
• A shortcode that outputs all of your social network info
• Shortcodes for image galleries
• Shortcodes for jQuery image sliders

Have you seen any other interesting uses of shortcodes? Do you make use of them in your site already?