U078 – What does the dot in a widget's shortcode mean?
The dot is a placeholder for a widget shortcode's last character. It indicates that that particular widget doesn't support sharing by shortcode.
In order to give users more control over the accessibility of their widgets, sharing by shortcode has been disabled by default. Since widgets shared using their shortcode also have no LMS support (Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, ...), these widgets also have extra limitations:
- you can't access the Live feature;
- your students need to provide their names upon submitting;
- you need to configure to whom (which account) results need to go, which may lead to error messages if the configuration is incorrect/incomplete;
- results won't sync with your LMS' gradebook, even if you use the LMS as a platform to provide the shortcode to your students.
Sharing widgets by means of their shortcodes has become an account setting, and it will be disabled it by default.
In case you are aware of these limitations, and still want to share by shortcode, this is still possible.
- Under BookWidgets account settings, enable Share widgets by shortcode. This will ensure all future widgets can be shared by shortcode (and will not have the placeholder dot).
- For any widgets that cannot be shared by shortcode (i.e. have a placeholder dot), open the Share window, choose Shortcode, and enable Share this widget by shortcode.