WordPress shortcodes—love em’ or hate ’em? Personally, I hate ’em and here’s why: Once you stop using a shortcode (for example when you switch to another theme) you’ll find shortcodes in full text on your posts.
Here’s a SQL query to remove them. Just update the code with the shortcode you want to remove. I’ve used [blue-button] in this example.
UPDATE wp_post SET post_content = replace(post_content, '[blue-button]', '' ) ;
An alternative to using shortcodes, consider using a plugin such as AddQuickTag.
This article was inspired by Steven Slack’s The shortfalls of [shortcodes]