That’s a simple and easy way to customize your posts a bit more, and ask your RSS readers to come visit from time to time! :)

Snippet: A “Feed Only” Shortcode for WordPress.

But what about the use of shortcodes outside of the editor? The guys at Wpengineer have prepared a simple tutorial to explain the use the of the do_shortcode function.

Use WordPress Shortcodes outside the Editor – Please Note, example-name, Shortcode, Editor, Custom, Field – WP Engineer.

But what if you do not want of a standard twitter button, but rather of a new and easy way for your readers to contact you via twitter? Luckily, Twitter @anywhere is here for you, and in that tutorial, we will see how to easily integrate at twitter box to any part of your blog, thanks to this service and the WordPress shortcodes! This can be done in a few easy step, and the result will look as below:

You will be able to customize the width and height of the form, as well as the message appearing by default in the box. Of course, as we will integrate this box with a shortcode, you will be able to integrate this tweetbox everywhere on your WordPress blog.

Here are the few steps to follow:

Create a new Twitter @Anywhere app

Go to http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere/apps/new, and create a new app with Read and Write access. The callback URL should be address of your blog.

Integrate the twitter API code in the header of your theme

In your theme’s  functions.php, integrate the call the twitter thanks to wp_enqueue_script, and then integrate the necessary script to integrate a twitter box into the head:

$api_key = "Add your twitter app API key here";
wp_enqueue_script("twitter-anywhere",
	"http://platform.twitter.com/anywhere.js?id={$api_key}&v=1");
add_action("wp_head", "twitter_box");

function twitter_box()
{
	echo '<script type="text/javascript">';
	echo 'twttr.anywhere(function (T) {T("#tbox").tweetBox({height: 100,width: 400,defaultContent: "<YOUR DEFAULT TWEETBOX CONTENT HERE>"});});';
	echo '</script>';
}

Thus you do not have to modify and clutter header.php with new lines of code, you can do it all through your functions.php file.

Create the shortcode

Again in functions.php, add the following lines:

function twitterbox_shortcode () {
	return '<div id="tbox"></div>';
}
add_shortcode("twitterbox", "twitterbox_shortcode");

And you’re done ! You can now use the shortcode [ twitterbox ] everywhere in your post content, in your theme widgets, and thus display a twitter box for your readers to contact you very easily via Twitter !

Any questions, or remarks? Do not hesitate to comment!

And of course, you can follow me on twitter too!

For that, we will make use of the WordPress shortcodes, that are a great and easy way to add features to your blog without having to install a plugin.
The idea is quite simple: we have a look at how Facebook videos are created, and then we replicate the embedding into a new shortcode.

Facebook videos have a unique id, that you can find in your address bar when viewing a video on Facebook. That’s the only element you will need to embed a Facebook video.

Adding the shortcode to your theme

In order to add the functionnality to your WordPress install, you will need to add a few lines of code to the functions.php file of your theme. If you do not have such a file, create it. This is easy to do and friendly to reseller hosting or any hosts for that matter.

Here is the function:

<?php

//Facebook Video Shortcode
function werewp_fn_fbvideo($atts, $content = null) {
   extract(shortcode_atts(array(
      "id" => '',
   ), $atts));
   return '<object width="400" height="224" >
   <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />
   <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
   <param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/'.$id.'" />
   <embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/'.$id.'" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="224">
   </embed>
   </object>';
}
add_shortcode("fbvideo", "werewp_fn_fbvideo");

?>

Add it to your file, save, and upload to your server. You’re done!

Display the video on your blog

Let’s take the example of the video of the latest addition to Facebook services, FB Places. The URL of the video is as follows: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php/?v=10150257497405484

The only thing you will need to insert that video on your blog is the id at the end of the URL: 10150257497405484.

Then, in your visual editor, simply add the shortcode fbvideo where you want your video to appear. Of course, replace the ID by whatever video id you would like to diplay!

fbvideo id="10150257497405484"]

And that’s how it should look! Happy blogging, with one more Facebook feature on your blog!

• WordPress Plugin Competition 2009 Winner! « Weblog Tools Collection
  The winner of the Grand Prize of the WordPress Plugin Competition 2009 is:
  Section Widget by Godfrey Chan!

Elegant Themes also updated a part of its themes, with a new options panel, giving the occasion to 2 lucky Wprecipes readers to win club memberships:

• ePanel Released: Batch 1- Elegant Themes Blog
  The now well known Elegant themes releases a new option panel for a part of its themes: ePanel (that’s its name) has been integrated into the following themes: eNews, Bold, ePhoto, eBusiness, CherryTruffle and PureType. The panel itself is probably the most advances theme options panel I have seen for a WordPress theme: the design, the SEO options, the ad settings, … You can do everything from that panel!

• WpRecipes & ElegantThemes contest: Win Premium WP Themes!
  Nick of ElegantThemes.com just released a killer option page for all his themes. To celebrate this great achievement, Nick decided to offer an ElegantThemes subscription to two of WPrecipes readers.

Two great tutorials were also published today:

• Filter Duplicate Posts in the Loop – Loop No1 , Loop, This, Therefore, WordPress – WP Engineer
  How to make sure that the content presented, which is output in a loop, does not show up again in a second loop.
• Easy Shortcode Permalinks | Digging into WordPress
  When you are building a theme, and the circumstance comes up where you need to create a link to a specific page hard-baked right into the theme, there is a function you should be using.

And I wanted to present you with a new WordPress cache plugin:

• WordPress › W3 Total Cache « WordPress Plugins
  After Wp Super Cache, another great cache plugin:
  W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download time of your theme and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.