What are the shortcodes in WordPress?
Shortcodes are a special tag that you add to your post, while viewing the post in the website, it gets replaced with other content.
For example, if someone adds [simple_wptree] of wp plugin to the post, then instead of that shortcode, the visitor sees the sitemap in the post of the website. Here the shortcode is replaced by the predetermined content.
One such example I use for embedding read more links on tekraze.com is by using notes widget. Example below
[su_note] Hello, I am a note[/su_note]
So, if we add this to the Wordpress editor, or text editor widget, we can render the note design having our text message. Same way several plugins do provide shortcodes, for quickly integrating functionality to any Wordpress site area like, sidebar or footer.
Thanks