Visual Composer Plugin - Adding further shortcode sets WordPress

Liam Bailey answers:

I always say, with Wordpress anything is possible, and I have found it to be true with varying degrees of difficulty. For example Woocommerce is very easy to expand upon because it makes very good use of the action and filter hook system provided by Wordpress. The plugin checks the theme dir for template overrides, and then beyond that almost every template function is on a hook, so you can easily change the order of things or rewrite parts of the functionality, using the original hooked function as a template. The same goes for the events manager and events manager pro plugins and loads of others.

In fact, for a while I had found so many plugins easy to expand and modify that I got a shock when one wasn't. I am not talking about modifying plugins as in changing the plugin files, I mean writing a new plugin and using provided hooks and filters to expand on its functionality. Most plugins now use hooks and filters where you will need them, but some still don't. Indeed, when I tried to add columns to the coupon table of the WP ecommerce plugin by getshopped.org I got the impression that they didn't want people to be able to do such simple expansions, not good in an open source world. The plugin had created a child of the WP_List_Table class, which by default has filters for the columns so you can add custom columns. The plugin had no such filter, in order to keep from modifying the core files (which I never do) I had to write my own child of the WP_List_Table class, remove the menu item for coupons and add my own with a new page, new callback and using the new child class to display the columns table. A lot of work just to add a couple of columns, and other expansions were equally difficult.

I have never used the Visual Composer plugin, but I would imagine that it would have hooks or filters where it is bringing in its shortcodes and content, and you can use these hooks to add your own shortcodes into the mix (see what I did there, composer...mix...sorry). If you want to drop me an email I would be happy to look over the plugin and give you a price for the coding. You can email me on [email protected] or I am on peopleperhour.com if you would rather work through escrow. Cheers.

zebra webdesigns answers:

Hello Richard
I did some research about your post and here are my suggestions and conclusions.
~Below is the previous wpquestion about shortcode reference plugin.
http://wpquestions.com/question/show/id/4307 - you may get some idea from here.
~according to visual composer : `vc_map()` call should be placed after shortcode registration hook (add_shortcode()).
~ Its better you use the hook only for the shortcode you are creating.
~ The plugin Shortcoder: http://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcoder/
actually shows inside the text block see the screenshot: http://s14.postimg.org/l72qm5ykx/Add_New_Page.png

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It appears in my personal opinion the logic is going out of road. Or else if I am mistaken can you please elaborate the Idea of your plugin use.

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