Getting Started with WordPress Shortcodes WordPress shortcodes were introduced in 2.5, and help you to create macro codes to use within your content. If you think about it, this is a great way to create something like a dynamic ad spot or a call-to-action button in your posts. If we use the call-to-action example, you could add something like this to your blogpost to show the button, and then edit the output in your templates functions.php file, which we’ll get to in a minute.