Recommend shortcodes plugin?

[PaulParticipant]

Hi there all,

Just wondering if anyone can recommend a decent shortcodes plugin?
Something that gives a few more UI possibilities for Beaver Builder that give it a few of the things it does’t have that for instance Divi theme does (counters / skill charts / filterable portfolio grid).

Basically I have tried things like Intense shortcodes – it’s great but it’s massive amount of files and I guess a lot of bloat. So something that is quite lightweight. I was wondering if anyone had some decent suggestions.

Where I am at is switching from custom coding themes to using Beaver Builder with something like Divi (or headway or eventually Genesis when I can figure that puppy out!). So I have gone from trying everything, to the point where I want a nice set of goto tools for every site build.

Any advise warmly recieved!

Many thanks
Paul

[Billy YoungKeymaster]

Hey Paul,

Thanks for getting in touch! While we don’t use shortcode plugins internally, I’ll leave this thread open in the event another user can offer some advice. One recommendation may be to do a quick google search to see what’s popular and what people are using in that arena.

Best,
Billy

[PaulParticipant]

Cheers Billy – What is Google sorry? (just kidding!)
Have an awesome weekend.

Love the plugin and the theme – great work guys.

[Billy YoungKeymaster]

Haha, no worries at all! You have a beaveriffic weekend! 🙂

[Dave BellParticipant]

Hey Paul, I am in almost the same boat. Not with shortcodes per se but with wanting quality goto tools that allow me to get a site up fast. Beaver Builder and the Beaver Theme are it for me.

If a client needs something that combination cannot do, they are not the right fit for me 🙂 Because I KNOW that BB is always coming out with cool new stuff, like the subscribe module 🙂

And some new designs from the contest soon 🙂 LOL!

Rock on, Dave

[stevew111Participant]

Hi Paul,

I’ve been researching this too and was going to go with Intense because it seems to have everything I need. I’ve been using some of the power themes on Envato and have decided to stop using them because they eventually become unsupported. I’m wanting lots of cool shortcodes, with animations, etc, like the themes I’ve been using, and Intense seemed to fit the bill.

What exactly was the issue with Intense. Is it compatible with Beaver? Does it slow it down noticeably?

You could try Shortcodes Ultimate, it’s one of the most popular and it’s free.

Steve

[PaulParticipant]

Hey Dave,
Thanks for the reply. It is quite amazing how WordPress and the subsequent tools,themes and plugins have defined a career for so many people (what would our lives be without WordPress – wha would the web be without it!).

Steve – I think my problem with Intense was the amount of files. I suppose it felt like there was going to be so much JavaScript ans css etc loaded I but 99% of it both redundant and present for potential conflicts with other scripts etc. massively impressed with how much intense pack in, but I think if I can find the time I might try learning how to make my own shortcodes instead. I don’t have frequent need for them. Things like skill charts and things like that really that I might have used elsewhere. Probably plugins for this with less baggage too I guess.

Thanks for answers everyone!

[DavidParticipant]

I just tried shortcode ultimate and it wouldn’t work. I did a search trying to see who in the forum is talking about shortcode plugins, if I find something I’ll let you know.

[stevew111Participant]

Thanks David. When you say Shortcode Ultimate wouldn’t work, what specifically happened. What’s the error message that you got, etc. Maybe BB can investigate this since it’s an extremely popular plugin.

[DavidParticipant]

Nothing happens. I click the button, it stays highlighted but the window to add the shortcode to the content doesn’t pop up.

[stevew111Participant]

David, that doesn’t sound like a BB problem. To use shortcodes in BB, you don’t use the WordPress editor. You paste the shortcode into any module that has text, which is many of them.

[DavidParticipant]

With Shortcode Ultimate you insert shortcodes with their shortcode builder. The builder wont even come up. I guess I could build it using the WordPress Editor on a different page, copy the shortcode and then paste it in. Sounds like more work than is necessary. But it is what it is.

[DavidParticipant]

So, I tried that. Here is the shortcode I used:

[su_row] [su_column size="1/2"][su_button url="http://example.com/forum/profile" background="#f55900" icon="icon: comments-o"]Edit Your Profile[/su_button] [/su_column]
[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://example.com/forum/profile" background="#f55900" icon="icon: comments-o"]Edit Your Profile[/su_button] [/su_column][/su_row]

The buttons rendered smaller than they should and they were on top of each other instead of side by side.

UPDATE: When I publish the page it looks fine.

[stevew111Participant]

What theme are you using? Justin at BB has helped me troubleshoot issues like that with shortcodes. There might be some css that needs to be added to the theme. Have you tried using it with the BB Theme. That’s your litmus test. If the problem persists with the BB theme then it’s probably something that the team at BB is going to need to fix.

[DavidParticipant]

I’m using the BB Theme. Did you see the update to my last response?

[PaulParticipant]

Hi there,

I have used Shortcodes Ultimate. You are right that the button doesn’t work when in the Beaver Biulder environment. I have the same issue. However the work around I used was to have another tab open with a draft post / page (not in Beaver) and create my shortcodes in there and then paste them into the builder. This worked for me. It’s not ideal, but I like this plugin (Ultimate) and I don’t want to use Intense. Whenever I have used Intense shortcodes I get the feeling there is so much to go wrong – something like 10,000 files. Seems it must add a lot of bloat to a site.

Cheers

[stevew111Participant]

Actually, in defense of Intense Shortcodes, you can decide which shortcodes to enable for your site, so that can cut down on the number of files considerably.

[PaulParticipant]

You can certainly tick the codes you want, but the plugin itself won’t delete 8000 of it’s 10000 files for instance, it will just load in to the editor the ones you can use.
I can’t imagine that each plugin has it’s owm JS and css file, unless the plugin does something quite cool like when you tick only a few shortcodes it generates a new static css and js file to keep load nice and light.
Maybe I should take another look.
Certainly the functionality it offered was really really good. I was thinking they must need an army of devs to keep it maintained.

[stevew111Participant]

If you go to Envato (codecanyon) you’ll see that the plugin is highly rated, very popular, the support is stellar, and people seem very satisfied as evidenced by their comments. That’s what I look for when making a choice of a plugin. It’s been out for a while and he is working hard to continually lessen its footprint and make it stable.

What I would worry about is a plugin that is free or that has few sales. If someone’s making a lot of money, then there’s an incentive to keep it updated, secure, optimized, constantly improving.

[DavidParticipant]

I have used Shortcodes Ultimate. You are right that the button doesn’t work when in the Beaver Biulder environment. I have the same issue. However the work around I used was to have another tab open with a draft post / page (not in Beaver) and create my shortcodes in there and then paste them into the builder. This worked for me. It’s not ideal, but I like this plugin (Ultimate) and I don’t want to use Intense. Whenever I have used Intense shortcodes I get the feeling there is so much to go wrong – something like 10,000 files. Seems it must add a lot of bloat to a site.

That’s exactly what I did and it seamed to work okay.

[PaulParticipant]

Hey Steve,
You know what. Everyone deserves a second chance. I think I’ll revisit Intense shotcodes. I just read up some more on it. Perhaps…those 10000+ files are mainly made up of all the free icons you get.

I think you have changed my mind. And that for me resolves the reason I posted this question in the first place.

Cheers 😉

[IntenseVisionsParticipant]

Hello All!

I’m one of the developers of Intense and happened to come across this thread while doing some research on the Intense shortcodes button not working properly in BB.

Thank you for all of the positive comments Steve (stevew111)!

Paul, I wish I could say that we have an army of devs working on Intense to keep it maintained. It’s just two of us doing all of the work. Chad and myself handle all the support, maintenance, and enhancements.

You are correct Paul, the majority of files in Intense are the free icons. There are nearly 5000 icons included in the plugin. We have been exploring other ways to package the icons.

The Intense CSS file is stored in an “intense” folder in the uploads folder. When shortcodes are turned on or off, the CSS is rebuilt. This keeps the size of the CSS file down to only what is necessary. We really do our best to make Intense work as efficiently as possible. We are more than open to suggestions if people have ideas on how we can improve the plugin.

We are exploring the issues with the shortcode/snippet buttons not working in BB. It seems it is similar to the issue mentioned with Shortcodes Ultimate.

If anyone has questions, suggestions, or needs help with Intense, we are more than happy to answer.

Thanks!

[DavidParticipant]

If you could get that button to work somehow, I’d buy it. Heck, I may just buy it anyway.

[DavidParticipant]

Just bought it! 🙂

[stevew111Participant]

So here’s an idea for the developers of Intense Shortcodes and also the developers of Beaver Builder. I think there’s a great co-marketing opportunity here that will greatly enhance both of your products.

Intense Shortcodes integrates with Visual Composer. Why not integrate with Beaver Builder. It would take a little bit of work but then you’d have a strong foothold into the Beaver community. Here’s how I see it – you could create modules for some or all of your shortcodes using the Beaver module templates – I think the Beaver team would be happy to support you in doing so. You’d make it so that the user would still have to purchase your plugin to have it work, but (and this is the co-marketing piece), perhaps the Beaver team would consider bundling your modules with Beaver Builder so that their users could instantly have almost a hundred more amazing components to work with for the ridiculously low price of $24. Beaver Builder in turn would be something of great value to Intense Shortcode customers and would also have a whole lot more value with the integration of the additional modules. It would be huge win for both Beaver Builder and Intense Shortcodes.

[DavidParticipant]

Something like that would be awesome for sure. Even somehow getting the button to work within BeaverBuilder would be awesome.

[IntenseVisionsParticipant]

Hello!

David, thank you for purchasing Intense.

Chad and I will look further into getting the buttons working correctly. We’ll let everyone here know when we have things working.

Steve, we will have to get more familiar with BeaverBuilder before we can make any promises, but it is an opportunity that we will explore further.

Again, thank you all for the feedback.

[DavidParticipant]

No problem! I do have a support question, but I’ll move over to your support forum for that.

[PaulParticipant]

Hi there all,

Intense guys – great to hear what you are saying here.
I think like I mentioned before, I’ll give Intense another go.
I was first introduced to Intense via Ultimatum theme. I think this is where I have aquired a bit of a downer because I found Ultimatum really slow (for me), although especially when Visual Composer was heavily involved. While I have a lifelong licence with Ultimatumm, I have stopped using this now swapping for Headway (and eventually when I get chance Genesis).
This is where my hangup on bloat has probably come from.
For me BB & Headway is a nice lite combination packing a serious punch. Add Intense shortcodes in there (now I know a bit more about it) and a lot can be achieved there.

I think you guys have convinced me otherwise. I already have a few licenses for Intense and it’s likely now I will buy some more as and when.

Personally here is my opinion on a BB and Intense link up. Personally I wouldn’t want to see things bundled in so much, after working with Ultimatum (which is a fantastic concept and very powerful, but no longer the tool of choice for me)…I would rather things stay separate but for instace Intense have a odule for BB that can be purchased. I like the idea of keeping things simple, lite and optional.

I might get over this at some point lol!

Cheers
Paul

[DerrickParticipant]

My comment isn’t directly related to the discussion of shortcode plugins that add additional styles/js to your current theme. However, it is shortcode plugin related.

I use the “Bootstrap 3 Shortcodes” plugin with the Beaver Builder theme.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/bootstrap-3-shortcodes/

“Bootstrap Shortcodes for WordPress assumes you’re working with a theme that already includes Bootstrap 3 and focuses on giving you a great set of shortcodes to use it with.”

Of course, that will only work if your theme uses Bootstrap.

This shortcode plugin gives me access to some of the bootstrap components and javascript that aren’t part of the Beaver Builder plugin. Examples: Popover, tooltip, modals, and alert boxes.

Of course, you have to use it in the WordPress Text Editor as opposed to the BB Page Builder. I just create a dummy page that I leave open in a different browser tab/monitor and copy paste over the resultant shortcodes. I ended up creating a “template elements” Page that I use to house all my frequently used shortcodes and other misc stuff.

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