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Post Content Shortcodes

By Curtiss Grymala

Content Management / Blog & Article Publishing

Reviewed by Abdul Hameid

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Post Content Shortcodes Review - In-Depth Analysis

This plugin adds shortcodes to display post content or lists within posts. It supports various attributes for customization.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.76/10

User Rating

4.8/5 (based on 31+ reviews)

Active Installations

2,000+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

This plugin adds two shortcodes that allow you to display either the content of a post or a list of posts within the content area of a post. This plugin should be fully compatible with all post types, as it simply uses the get_post() and get_posts() WordPress functions.

The first shortcode is the [post-content] shortcode. Using that shortcode will allow you to display the content of one post within another post. This shortcode requires a single attribute with a key of 'id'. You can also use optional arguments to customize the display.

The second shortcode is the [post-list] shortcode. This shortcode allows you to display a list of posts based on various filtering options. You can customize the output using several arguments.

Additionally, the plugin supports multisite functionality, allowing you to pull posts from other blogs within the network.

Comparing to Alternatives

Post Content Shortcodes is a specialized plugin with a strong user base and few direct competitors offering the same focused functionality.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly rated with a 4.8 average from 31 users
No known security vulnerabilities
Simple and effective for importing and displaying post content
Free to use with no paid version required
Positive user feedback highlights ease of use and functionality

Weaknesses

Limited support responsiveness reported by some users
Minor glitches reported with excerpt length handling
Some issues with multi-blog content import and image handling
Lacks advanced features found in some alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

The plugin enjoys overwhelmingly positive reviews with 93.5% five-star ratings, indicating strong user satisfaction overall.

Positive highlights

"One word genius coder with crazy plugins" - harry murtie
"A savior for who need it. Period." - the masked cat
"Magnificent! Awesome!! Stupendous!!!" - username0077
"Works perfectly straight after installing. Love it." - Exo

Common complaints

Not currently working and lack of support

Weaknesses

Some fragility with excerpt length requiring trial and error
Issues with multi-blog content import especially images
Editing exported content can be problematic due to caching

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users needing a straightforward, reliable plugin to import and display post content within a single WordPress blog will find this plugin very effective.

Not ideal for

Those requiring robust multi-blog content import features or who expect active, rapid support may find this plugin less suitable.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers full functionality for importing and displaying post content without restrictions.

Final Verdict

Post Content Shortcodes stands out for its simplicity, reliability, and excellent user ratings, making it a great choice for users focused on single-blog content import and display. Its lack of security issues and free availability add to its appeal.

However, users needing multi-blog support or expecting active developer support should consider alternatives. Despite minor weaknesses, this plugin delivers strong value for its intended use case.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Post Content Shortcodes plugin.

Post content

Post list

Shortcode

FAQ

Automatic Installation

The easiest way to install this plugin automatically from within your administration area.

Go to Plugins -> Add New in your administration area, then search for the plugin “Post Content Shortcodes”.
Click the “Install” button.
Go to the Plugins dashboard and “Activate” the plugin (for MultiSite users, you can safely “Network Activate” this plugin).

Manual Installation

If that doesn’t work, or if you prefer to install it manually, you have two options.

Upload the ZIP

Download the ZIP file from the WordPress plugin repository.
Go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload in your administration area.
Click the “Browse” (or “Choose File”) button and find the ZIP file you downloaded.
Click the “Upload” button.
Go to the Plugins dashboard and “Activate” the plugin (for MultiSite users, you can safely “Network Activate” this plugin).

FTP Installation

Download the ZIP file from the WordPress plugin repository.
Unzip the file somewhere on your harddrive.
FTP into your Web server and navigate to the /wp-content/plugins directory.
Upload the post-content-shortcodes folder and all of its contents into your plugins directory.
Go to the Plugins dashboard and “Activate” the plugin (for MultiSite users, you can safely “Network Activate” this plugin).

Must-Use Installation

If you would like to force this plugin to be active (generally only useful for Multi Site installations) without an option to deactivate it, you can upload the post-content-shortcodes.php & class-post-content-shortcodes.php files to your /wp-content/mu-plugins folder. If the mu-plugins folder does not exist, you can safely create it. Make sure not to upload the post-content-shortcodes folder into your mu-plugins directory, as “Must Use” plugins must reside in the root mu-plugins directory in order to work.

To display the content of a single post within another post, you want to use the [post-content] shortcode. To display the content of the post with an ID of 25 and a slug of ‘this-is-my-cool-post’, the usage would look like:

[post-content id=25]

[post-content post_name="this-is-my-cool-post"]

To display a list of posts within another post, you want to use the [post-list] shortcode. To display a list of all pages (post_type=page) on this site, the usage would look like:

[post-list post_type="page"]

By default, this plugin will display all posts that match the specified criteria (except for the current post). To limit the number of posts that are displayed, you should add the numberposts argument to the shortcode. That would look like:

[post-list post_type="page" numberposts=15]

The [post-content] shortcode will not output any extra HTML at all. It simply outputs the content of the page being cloned. The original title is not output, nor is any sort of wrapper HTML.

The [post-list] shortcode, however, does output some HTML to actually format the list. The default HTML code output looks like:

&lt;ul class="post-list"&gt; &lt;li class="listed-post"&gt;&lt;a href="%permalink%" title="%title%"&gt;%title&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;

Yes.

If the [post-list] shortcode retrieves an empty list of posts/pages, it will normally return an empty string (so as not to disrupt the flow of the page). However, you can have the shortcode output a custom error message by hooking into the post-content-shortcodes-no-posts-error filter.
If you would like to use a different set of default values for the shortcode arguments, you can hook into the post-content-shortcodes-defaults filter. The array of default arguments is passed to that filter before it gets used.
If you would like to alter the output of the [post-content] shortcode (for instance, to wrap it in an HTML container, or to add content before or after), you can hook into the post-content-shortcodes-content filter. The constructed HTML output is passed as the first parameter, and the WordPress post object is passed as a second parameter.
If you would like to change the “Read More” link used in the [post-content] shortcode (if you are limiting the length of the content/excerpt), you can use the post-content-shortcodes-read-more filter to do so.
If you would like to modify the class used on the featured image (if appropriate), you can use the post-content-shortcodes-image-class to do that.
By default, the plugin uses ‘thumbnail’ as the size of the featured image. If you would like to use a different registered size, you can change that with the post-content-shortcodes-default-image-size filter.

There are also four actions that are executed (as of 0.6) within the plugin:

pcs_starting_post_content – Fires when the post_content() function is entered; allows you to selectively add any special filters, etc. that need to be added just for use within the post-content shortcode.
pcs_ending_post_content – Fires before the output from the post_content() function is returned; allows you to remove any filters that you may have added in the pcs_starting_post_content action.
pcs_starting_post_list – Fires when the post_list() function is entered; allows you to selectively add any special filters, etc. that need to be added just for use within the post-list shortcode.
pcs_ending_post_list – Fires before the output from the post_list() function is returned; allows you to remove any filters you may have added in the pcs_starting_post_list action.

By default, the [post-list] shortcode excludes the current post (since that would cause somewhat of a loop in the user’s mind; clicking on a link in the page only to have the page reload with the same content). To allow the current post to be displayed in the list of posts, set the exclude_current argument to 0. That might look something like:

[post-list exclude_current=0]

Yes. You can safely network-activate this plugin, or even use it as a mu-plugin. To pull a post with a slug of ‘this-is-my-cool-post’ from a blog with an ID of 10 and a slug of ‘mycoolsite’, the usage would look something like:

[post-content post_name="this-is-my-cool-post" blog=10]

[post-content post_name="this-is-my-cool-post" blog="mycoolsite"]

[post-list exclude_current=0]

Contributors and developers

“Post Content Shortcodes” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Curtiss Grymala

Free Version Docs

WPS

6.76

Average

Ratings

4.8 out of 5 | 31

Version

1.0.1.1

Last updated

8 years ago

Active installations

2,000+

WordPress version

4.9.32 or higher

PHP version

or higher

Languages

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Post Content Shortcodes Review - In-Depth Analysis

Performance Overview

What It Does

Comparing to Alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

Who Should Use This?

Pricing & Value

Final Verdict

Other Notable Features

FAQ

Automatic Installation

Manual Installation

Must-Use Installation

Contributors and developers

Ratings

Reviews (31)

Sort by:

Contributors & Developers

Interested in development?

Changelog

Security Status

Secure

No Unpatched Vulnerabilities

Known Vulnerabilities (0)

Previous Versions

WPS

6.76

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