readme.txt

=== The Shorthand Editor ===
Contributors: shorthandconnect
Tags: visual storytelling, page builder, content creation, AI layouts
Requires at least: 6.0
Tested up to: 6.9.4
Stable tag: 1.0.5
Requires PHP: 7.4
License: GPLv3 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
Plugin URI: https://shorthand.com/products/shorthand-for-wordpress

The Shorthand Editor transforms how teams create stories, uniting creative and technical talent to deliver beautiful, high-impact content.

== Description ==

= The Fastest Way to Create Visually Powerful Stories in WordPress =

Trusted by the world's most iconic brands and publishers, including **the BBC, Dow Jones, Honda, the University of Cambridge, WWF, and more**, Shorthand has powered millions of high-impact stories for more than a decade.

Now, that same award-winning storytelling experience is available **natively inside WordPress**.

= Why Teams Choose Shorthand =

**Better Content in Less Time**

- **3x faster** publishing speed with visual building blocks
- **10x more engaging stories** backed by years of UX research
- **AI-powered layouts** for rapid experimentation and creative momentum
- **Fewer revisions**: writers, designers, marketers, and developers all collaborate in one place

**Lower Costs & Operational Efficiency**

- Reduce developer hours on bespoke layouts
- Minimize technical debt with a single, modern storytelling workflow
- Lower TCO by eliminating multiple plugins, custom code maintenance, and ad-hoc design work

**Enterprise Security & Scalability**

- Lives entirely inside your WordPress tech stack
- Uses WordPress permissions and workflows—no new user management
- **ISO 27001** and **SOC 2** compliant infrastructure
- Designed for enterprise-grade governance, uptime, and scale

**Reliable Performance & Compliance**

- **No plugin bloat** — lightweight, fast, and optimized
- **SEO-friendly** markup and lightning-fast rendering
- **Fully responsive** on all devices
- **WCAG accessibility compliance** baked in
- Supports modern WordPress versioning, caching layers, CDN setups, and security plugins

**Brand Consistency at Scale**

- Official brand themes, templates, and reusable components
- AI-powered layout suggestions reflect your brand's voice and visual identity
- Ensure every team produces content that looks and feels on brand

= Used by the World's Leading Storytelling Teams =

For over a decade, Shorthand has been used by:

- **The BBC** for digital features and interactive explainers
- **Dow Jones & The Wall Street Journal** for premium editorial stories
- **Honda** for brand storytelling and product narratives
- **The University of Cambridge** to showcase research and impact
- **WWF, the United Nations, Sky News, and dozens more**

These teams rely on Shorthand for:

- Rapid content production
- Visual excellence
- Strong editorial control
- Reliability at global scale

Now, WordPress teams get access to that same capability **without leaving WordPress**.

= How Shorthand Works For You =

The Shorthand Editor adds a new visual editor experience inside your existing WordPress workflow.

No iframes, no third-party hosting, and no custom deployments.

1. **Create** — Start a new story directly inside WordPress
2. **Design** — Use Shorthand sections, layouts, scroll effects, and templates
3. **Collaborate** — Writers, designers, and developers work in real time
4. **Publish** — Push directly to your WordPress theme with clean, optimized markup

Unlike traditional page builders, Shorthand prioritizes **speed, performance, and editorial craft**, not infinite widget complexity.

= Who Shorthand Is For =

Shorthand is ideal for:

- Enterprise WordPress teams
- Publishers & media organizations
- Corporate communications & brand storytelling teams
- Higher education marketing
- Nonprofits and public-sector organizations
- Agencies producing premium editorial content for clients

If your teams need to produce **high-impact narratives** — think annual reports, success stories, data features, longform articles, landing pages, campaign storytelling, or interactive editorial — Shorthand is purpose-built for you.

= Shorthand vs Traditional Page Builders =

**Shorthand focuses on storytelling**, not general-purpose layout building.

- **Purpose**: Visual storytelling, editorial features (vs. general site layout)
- **Speed**: 3x faster publishing (vs. complex interfaces that slow teams down)
- **Plugin Bloat**: Lightweight (vs. often heavy with performance impact)
- **Collaboration**: Real-time team workflows (vs. limited)
- **SEO & Performance**: Clean, optimized output (vs. can create slow pages)
- **Accessibility**: WCAG best practices (vs. depends heavily on user)
- **Enterprise Readiness**: ISO27001, SOC2 (vs. varies widely)
- **Brand Governance**: Built-in themes & AI layouts (vs. manual setup)

If your goal is **scroll-based, visually rich, narrative content**, Shorthand will outperform generic page builders in both workflow speed and finished quality.

= Key Features =

**Visual Story Builder**

Craft magazine-quality stories with scroll effects, multimedia sections, and responsive layouts.

**AI Layouts & Template System**

Speed up ideation and standardize brand storytelling across teams.

**Media-Rich Experiences**

Embed video, audio, imagery, charts, embeds, and interactive elements easily.

**Collaboration Tools**

Real-time editing for writers, designers, and developers inside your WordPress site.

**Enterprise Hosting & Compliance**

Backed by secure infrastructure with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification.

**Performance-First Architecture**

Clean HTML output, optimized assets, minimal CSS/JS, and fast rendering.

= Use Cases: What You Can Build =

**Brand Storytelling & Campaigns**

Bring your brand's mission, values, impact, or product stories to life with beautiful, on-brand experiences.

**Longform Feature Stories**

Produce premium editorial features with scroll-driven storytelling, rich media, and magazine-quality layouts.

**Digital Magazines**

Create responsive, web-native magazine issues that replace PDFs and flipbooks with real engagement and better SEO.

**Data Storytelling**

Blend charts, forecasts, maps, and interactive data with narrative — ideal for research, journalism, and institutional reporting.

**Sponsored Content & White Papers**

Produce brand-aligned stories and multimedia white papers that outperform static PDFs.

**Internal Communications**

Deliver internal stories with visual clarity — newsletters, updates, training pieces, and stakeholder communications.

**Educational Resources**

Publish high-quality lectures, research summaries, online learning content, and scholar-friendly narratives.

**Sports Marketing**

Build fan-facing stories, athlete profiles, event recaps, and immersive seasonal campaigns.

**Science Communication**

Make complex science accessible with interactive visuals, maps, and narrative storytelling.

**Annual & Corporate Reports**

Transform long, text-heavy reports into immersive, visual experiences with charts, media, and scrollytelling.

= Everything You Need to Create Visually Powerful Stories =

**Scrollytelling**

Build immersive, scroll-based digital stories that engage your audience with animation effects, media transitions, and interactive scroll-driven experiences.

**Editor & Layout**

Use Shorthand's powerful but intuitive editor to craft rich stories without code. Features include:

- Drop-cap text, block quotes, flexible typography
- Responsive images & video
- Embeds, 3D effects, tables & charts
- Custom HTML blocks
- Multi-device previewing and real-time collaboration

**Sections**

Build stunning stories using modular, flexible section types. Add, duplicate, reorder, or remove sections with ease. Perfect for long-form narratives, campaigns, landing pages, and magazine-style layouts.

**Themes & Branding**

Ensure every story matches your brand's look and feel. Lock in your brand fonts, colors, logos, and layout styles with reusable themes and style presets. Includes support for custom CSS/JS.

**Customization & Integration**

Extend stories with powerful customization options:

- Custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Interactive data visualizations, maps, and embeds
- Analytics snippets and third-party tracking
- Story API for deeper WordPress or CMS integrations

**Sharing & Analytics**

Boost reach and measure impact with:

- Built-in social sharing metadata and buttons
- Native analytics (views, read-time, completion rates)
- Support for Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Matomo, and others

**Security & Compliance**

Designed for organizations with rigorous requirements. Includes:

- SOC 2 Type 2 compliance
- Strong data governance
- Accessibility features aligned to WCAG standards
- A secure, global infrastructure

**White-Glove Support & Services**

Get expert onboarding, training, and dedicated support. Also includes optional editorial and design assistance for enterprise teams producing high-profile stories.

= Why This Matters for WordPress Teams =

By bringing these capabilities directly into WordPress, Shorthand gives your teams a unified, high-performance workflow to produce visually powerful, on-brand stories — all without plugin bloat, page-builder complexity, or custom development cycles.

== Installation ==

= Minimum Requirements =

- WordPress 6.0 or greater
- PHP version 7.2 or greater
- HTTPS support

= Get the Plugin =

The Shorthand Editor is distributed as a ZIP file. The latest version may
be downloaded from the
[Shorthand website](https://shorthand.com/products/shorthand-for-wordpress).

= Install the Plugin =

You can follow the instructions provided on the WordPress codex relating to
[Uploading](https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/manage-plugins/#upload-via-wordpress-admin)
or [Manual installation](https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/manage-plugins/#manual-plugin-installation-1)
to install it on your WordPress instance.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, don't forget to follow
the instructions to [Connect to Shorthand](#connect-to-shorthand)!

= Connect to Shorthand =

Once the plugin has been installed, you will need to connect your WordPress site
to Shorthand. Only a WordPress user with the ability to activate plugins can perform
this task.

During this process, you will establish a Shorthand account and workspace
for the content you will create.

1. Navigate the dashboard to the "Installed Plugins" page in the Plugins menu
1. Find the plugin named "The Shorthand Editor" and click "Connect to Shorthand…"
1. Sign in with your Shorthand account, or create a new account by selecting "Start Creating For Free"
1. Select a new or existing workspace to be associated with your organisation
1. Select a new or existing WordPress team for your site
1. Click "Connect" to complete the connection

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

**Does The Shorthand Editor plugin use an external service?**

Yes! The Shorthand Editor plugin brings WordPress and the Shorthand platform together, to allow you to create and edit rich,
engaging stories in the Shorthand editor, preview them as web pages on your WordPress dashboard, and publish them to your
WordPress hosting.

**How does The Shorthand Editor plugin access Shorthand, specifically?**

During the course of operation, a user may direct this plugin to

- associate a WordPress site with a Shorthand workspace
- authorise a user to access Shorthand content
- navigate a user to an authorised page on the Shorthand website to create or edit their story content
- enumerate, access and update the story content created using the interactive story editor
- obtain previews of story content for display on the admin dashboard when editing or previewing a story
- download the CSS, JS, HTML, and other asset files of a story that a user publishes to WordPress

To provide this functionality, the plugin may navigate to the Shorthand web application in the browser at
[app.shorthand.com](https://app.shorthand.com), or make requests of the Shorthand API at
[api.shorthand.com](https://api.shorthand.com) from the WordPress instance.

A published story does not require the Shorthand platform, although it may load code from Shorthand in order to
facilitate embedded rich content, or to provide anonymised page view counts. These scripts may be served from the
[iframely.shorthand.com](https://iframely.shorthand.com) and
[analytics.shorthand.com](https://analytics.shorthand.com) domains respectively.

This service is provided by Shorthand Pty Ltd, and is covered by these [terms of use](https://shorthand.com/legal/customer-terms/)
and [privacy policy](https://shorthand.com/legal/privacy-policy/).

**Is Shorthand a page builder?**

Not exactly. Shorthand is a **visual storytelling platform** designed for premium editorial content—not for building full site layouts.

**Will Shorthand slow down my WordPress site?**

No. Shorthand is built for **speed, optimization, and minimal footprint**. It avoids the bloat typical of large page builders.

**Do I need a paid account to use The Shorthand Editor plugin?**

The Shorthand Editor must be [connected](#connect-to-shorthand) to a Shorthand workspace, where you can can create and edit stories
for free. When you are ready to publish, activate your subscription to obtains credits for publishing. (Compare [Shorthand plans here](https://shorthand.com/pricing/).)

Once your stories have been published, they reside on your WordPress site.

**Does Shorthand work with my theme?**

Yes. You can craft bespoke custom themes in Shorthand to standardize colors, fonts, logos, buttons, whole sections and more across stories.

**Is this suitable for enterprise environments?**

Yes. With ISO27001/SOC2 compliance, WordPress-native permissions, and secure infrastructure, Shorthand is built for enterprise teams.

**Can I use Shorthand with Gutenberg?**

Yes. Shorthand complements Gutenberg by providing a specialized tool for rich, scroll-based narratives.

**Where can I find the source code?**

You can find the source code for this plugin at [The Shorthand Editor](https://github.com/shorthand/shorthand_editor_wordpress).

== Troubleshooting ==

In general, we recommend the following:

- re-activating WP-Cron if it is not enabled
- checking that the WordPress instance is not behind a firewall

If you are experiencing issues when navigating between Shorthand and WordPress, try

- ensuring that your WordPress site is configured to use HTTPS; and
- following the process to [reconnect to your existing WordPress team in Shorthand](#connect-to-shorthand).

If you are experiencing publishing issues, ensure that your Shorthand workspace has been
activated, and has sufficient story credit.

Some WordPress plugins can aggressively cache or control how content is displayed at
the theme-level. If a Shorthand story is not displaying correctly when published, try
different WordPress themes, or configure additional CSS under the plugin's settings
page.

For further support and feedback, contact help@shorthand.com.

== Changelog ==

= 1.0.5 =

- Fix settings save disconnecting the plugin.

= 1.0.4 =

- Confirm compatibility with WordPress 6.9.4.
- Fix story permalink slug falling back to the post type name.

= 1.0.3 =

- Improve error messaging when connections to Shorthand fail.
- Extend authorisation token expiry to tolerate slower navigation.

= 1.0.2 =

Public release

- Side-by-side activation with Shorthand Connect plugin now supported.
- Updated the custom post type identifier and location used for Shorthand stories (note: stories created with pre-release versions may not be visible until migrated or recreated).
- Added cleanup of downloaded story bundles when stories are deleted to prevent unused files from remaining on the server.
- Removed legacy hooks and filters

= 1.0.1 =

- Address bundling issue during deployment

= 1.0.0 =

- Full visual story builder
- AI layouts & template library
- Enterprise-grade security & compliance
- SEO/Performance optimizations