Blog

  • Listing all the currently available WordPress shortcodes

    Listing all the currently available WordPress shortcodes

    Who knows all the shortcodes that are currently available to your WordPress installation? I know I don’t. Well, inspired by a request from a WordPress VIP client to understand it better, here’s a quick and simple solution to list them out.

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  • Being out of office and the mis-use of initialisms

    Being out of office and the mis-use of initialisms

    Initialisms can be great (and, yes, I mean ‘Initialism’ rather than ‘abbreviation’, as it’s the correct term in this case). However, when they’re simply not required and it may not be a universal term then you should always be careful of their use. I mention this when I had an email today stating…

    I am OOTO today

    I didn’t catch on at first but soon realised they meant ‘out of the office’. I’d come across OOO and OOF before (the latter is a Microsoft thing – “out of facility”) but not this one. Except, this is an email responder and not Twitter – no shortening was required. How much clearer would it have been to have simply said “I am out of the office today”. They’re rarely this short overall anyway, with messages often looking more like this…

    I am OOO until Wednesday. In my absence, please contact Bob for any urgent queries.

    Now, seriously, what is the point of shortening “out of office” here? At Automattic we use AFK (“away from keyboard”) but I wouldn’t think of using this externally.

    Be professional and be clear – anyone receiving your reply shouldn’t be puzzled (even if just at first) by what you mean.

  • The VIPs in the High Castle

    The VIPs in the High Castle

    Because one team meetup a year in never enough, the VIP team have met once more. This time it was just the support team and was to be in Scotland.

    A castle, to be more precise.

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  • Do you understand your UK rights on mis-selling?

    Do you understand your UK rights on mis-selling?

    So, in the UK, if a retailer advertises a product at one price and then tries to make you pay for it at another, that’s mis-selling and they can get into trouble with trading standards, right?

    Well, that was always my thinking on how this was supposed to work but, in the last week, I’ve learnt that it’s not the case at all.

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  • Why don’t we value the work of artists?

    Why don’t we value the work of artists?

    https://twitter.com/Adammorley7/status/884387103563542529

    It seems an innocent enough Tweet, doesn’t it, but my reply to it caused an immediate, negative reaction from the author.

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