Introducing the WordPress TextExpander Public Group

WordPress TextExpander Public Group

As some of you may know (or will find out in the days to come), I’m a very typical case of an optimizer. I like to streamline everything as much as I can and improve my workflow through automation or using tools… Sometimes it gets to the point that it becomes so complex with improvements I have to simplify it, forcing myself to just do more work. Crazy, huh?

One tool that will undoubtedly stay in my digital toolbox is TextExpander 6, developed by Smile Software. TextExpander is a tool that allows you to type in a short phrase or trigger that will change to something else. This can be used for autocorrect, saving links, saving “canned answers”, and building email templates – here are just a few quick examples below.

!ahref
<a href=”WHATEVER YOU HAD IN YOUR CLIPBOARD WILL BE ADDED HERE” target=”_blank”>YOUR CURSOR WILL MOVE HERE SO YOU CAN TYPE THE NAME OF THE LINK</a>
!worksignature
<strong>Colonel Jack O’Neill</strong>
SG-1 Team Commander
Cheyenne Mountain Base
!fun.facepalm
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4966805/sharing/woo/stanfacepalm.png (this one is great for chat rooms and watercoolers)

So what’s a Public Group?

In TextExpander 6, users were given the ability to share snippets with their team members. In the case of Automattic and WooThemes, we have somewhere around 80 employees pulling from the same snippet repositories with 3000+ different snippets – a really neat thing to do.

Public Groups take that one step further – anyone can publish a group of snippets, assuming they meet appropriate guidelines.

The WordPress TextExpander Public Group

Having been a TextExpander fanboy from the first time I used it, I set aside a bit of my workday and put the finishing touches on something we would get heavy use with in (self hosted) WordPress and WooCommerce Support – a way to quickly get to most pages in your site without having to go through multiple menus. I knew this could be helpful for other users outside of just our company, so I submitted (apparently the first) group of Snippets, which are now live for use on the TextExpander Public Groups Page!

What You’ll Need

  1. A TextExpander 6 License (well worth the money – article coming shortly).
  2. About 10 minutes.

Go over and check it out on the Public Groups Page, and be sure to either read the documentation in the Notes section of the group from inside your application or web interface, or head over to the more detailed documentation here.


Hopefully this gives WordPress support agents and developers a quick and easy way to navigate their sites, and since I’m always looking to improve, drop a line in the comment section below or in the Contact Form for the project here.

Enjoy!


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