Children Shortcodes?
This is possible, but you can only nest one level down, after that the shortcode regexp parser flips out. So your example would be okay, but [item1] would not be able to contain even more nested shortcodes. To enable nesting, just go ahead and do: add_shortcode(‘data’, function($attributes, $content=””) { return do_shortcode($content); } Relevant article: http://www.sitepoint.com/wordpress-nested-shortcodes/