Create Widget or Enable Shortcodes in Sidebar

Question

I'm well aware that WordPress by default does not process shortcodes in the sidebar. My question is why.

I'm building a very small plugin that exports some content when the shortcode is present. This will be primarily used in the content area. I want to allow the user to display that content in the sidebar and I'm debating including the one line fix to enable the shortcodes rather than adding ~50 lines of code to create a widget.

Is there something going on under the hood that is a good reason to avoid the shortcode in the sidebar? Is it simply a convention?

Answer 1

There are a few pitfalls, mainly with wpautop being applied after the shortcode filter, and multiple do_shortcode calls because of plugins that already added this filter to widget_text.

See the discussion in the following ticket: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10457