How to create better looking content on your WordPress site. For more information and relevant links check out http://www.jonbishop.com/2011/06/wordpress-shortcodes/
Intro: WordPress allows me to enable my customers to take control of content they previously had no control over Shortcodes are one of the ways I give my customers control over their content What do I mean by better content? Mostly I just mean better looking content but you can also have access to content that was previously harder to display on your WordPress site.
Easy to use: With only a few keystrokes you can create and test your shortcodes. Easy to create: Shortcodes are easy to create and with a little know-how you can convert previously repetitive tasks into easy to use shortcodes Simplify repetitive tasks: Rather than have my clients copy and paste chunks of code to recreate buttons or text boxes on their sites they can simply reuse the same shortcodes which are a lot easier to remember and involve a lot less code on their end
Shortcodes were added in WordPress 2.5 as an easy way to create macros for use in your content.
Jetpack Plugin
You associate your shortcode with a handler using add_shortcode.
If you are using shortcodes provided by a theme you are potentially bound to that theme unless you change your content or find a theme with the same shortcode syntax Your handler needs to call do_shortcode