Shortcodes are a truly remarkable feature of WordPress. They make it possible to easily add advanced functionality and features to pages, inject content into posts, and more. In the past, site owners have had to rely on plugins to add shortcode capabilities to their site but recently some developers have started including them in their WordPress themes. It’s an attractive proposition for site owners: buy a theme and instantly get advanced functionality without chasing down a handful of plugins.

Trouble with Shortcodes

But WordPress is forgetful. It only remembers how to handle shortcodes for one page request and must re-learn every shortcode each time a page is loaded. It is this forgetfulness that makes it possible to activate a new theme and instantly have a transformed admin experience! And usually, with plugins registering advanced functionality, it works great. After all, plugins are loaded on every request, regardless of which theme is active.

If you’ve ever swapped out your WordPress theme to one that doesn’t have the same shortcodes, though, you’ll already be familiar with the problem: WordPress suddenly can’t understand the shortcode and leaves it in your pages and posts unprocessed!

WPtouch Pro works the same way: when the plugin steps in to take care of your mobile visitor, it begins by telling WordPress to set aside your desktop theme and use your chosen mobile theme instead. If your content has relied on shortcodes from the desktop theme, you may have seen unprocessed shortcodes appear in your posts and on your pages.

Making Progress

The same problem existed in the past with custom post types. We made big progress with custom post types in 2014 enabling WPtouch Pro to learn about the custom post types used in your site and then re-registering them when your site is accessed. As a result, WordPress always knows they exist, and is able to load your content for mobile visitors.

Although in the past we’ve encouraged site owners to make use of our ability to load your desktop theme’s functions.php files to try to fix this issue, the complexity of modern WordPress themes has made this less useful than it has been in the past. After reaching out to major theme framework developers to try to find a resolution to the shortcode problem, we determined the time had come for a complete re-think of our approach.

A new approach – and a solution

Today shortcode compatibility for mobile visitors is taking a huge leap forward with WPtouch Pro 3.7. With just one click you can enable our all-new shortcode handling, which loads your page and post text as though the desktop theme had been active all along.

Although this new feature will take care of almost all needs, you may need to use WPtouch Pro’s custom code feature to include any styling/scripts relied on for advanced functionality such as content tabbing.

The WPtouch Pro 3.7 update is available now for all customers with an active license, via your WordPress dashboard for licensed sites and the Account page here on wptouch.com.

We’re excited to finally be able to share this development with you and look forward to your feedback and to seeing what you do with WPtouch Pro.

OK, I missed New Year’s Eve by a month–but there is still have much to celebrate: the release of WPtouch Pro 3.6.6 and a whole new support system!

If you haven’t updated WPtouch Pro since we emailed you in November, you’ve missed a fair bit! We added tools to help you manage your WPtouch Pro license from inside the plugin in 3.6.2.

In 3.6.3 we reworked our theme & extension system to automatically update whenever you update the WPtouch Pro plugin. And throughout we’ve made improvements and updated translations across the entire plugin. Many of those have carried across to the free edition, too.

After almost two years of trying we finally accepted that our support system was getting in the way more than it was helping us provide you with great support.

If you logged in to wptouch.com this week you will have seen the all-new My Account page, with license management tools, renewals, past purchases, and more all in one place.

We have moved tickets and the knowledgebase (now called ‘Solutions’) to Freshdesk, a great customer support system that lets you get help from us more easily than before.

Best of all, there’s no new account or password needed: you still login via wptouch.com.

As always there are a variety of updates in 3.6.6.

Newly added:

• The ability for themes and extensions to disable Web-App Mode.
• If you set a custom excerpt for your posts, WPtouch will use it when it displays related posts.
• Support for category hierarchy in MobileStore

Changed:

• More localization updates (German, Greek, Hindi, and Indonesian)
• More robust category listing
• Updated link for support, etc. to point to our new ticket & knowledgebase and the new My Account page.
• Because Web-App Mode is not compatible with off-site payment gateways, MobileStore no longer allows Web-App Mode to be used when no compatible gateways are found.Read out more about MobileStore and Web-App Mode in our support article.
• MobileStore now allows selecting a custom latest posts page.

And Fixed:

• A bug in MobileStore where it was not possible to completely disable product filters once any had been selected.
• Layout bug in menu on sites with sequential nested menu items.

We’re excited about what we’ve got planned for WPtouch Pro in 2015. Thanks for your continued support!