Revised shortcode handling for a recent posts widget that pulls content from an RSS feed. For use in a child theme of Avada.

recent_feed_posts_shortcode.php

add_shortcode('mcm_recent_feed_posts', 'shortcode_mcm_recent_feed_posts');
/**
 * shortcode_mcm_recent_feed_posts() - Retrieves posts from RSS feed
 *
 * @see fetch_feed()
 *
 * @since 1.0.0
 *
 * @param array $atts {
 *		@type string $url RSS feed URL.
 * }
 * @return string Feed recent posts html.
 */
function shortcode_mcm_recent_feed_posts( $atts, $content = null ){
	extract( shortcode_atts( array(
		'excerpt_words'	=> null,
		'url'			=> null,
	), $atts) );
	
	$args = array();
	
	if( is_null( $url ) )
		return '<p>Feed URL is null.</p>';
	
	$feed = fetch_feed( $url );
	
	if( ! is_wp_error( $feed ) ){
		$maxitems = $feed->get_item_quantity( 3 );
		
		$rss_items = $feed->get_items( 0, $maxitems );
		
		if( 0 == $maxitems ){
			return '<p>Feed contains no items.</p>';
		} else {
			$format = '<div class="avada-container layout-thumbnails-on-side layout-columns-1"><section class="columns columns-1"><div class="holder">%s</div></section></div>';
			foreach( $rss_items as $item ){
				$full_content = strip_tags( $item->get_content() );
				if( ! is_null( $excerpt_words ) && is_numeric( $excerpt_words ) ){
					$all_words = explode( ' ', $full_content );
					$content = '';
					for( $x = 0; $x < $excerpt_words; $x++ ){
						$content.= ' ' . $all_words[$x];
					}
					$content.= ' [...]';
				} else {
					$content = $full_content;
				}
				
				$src = '';
				foreach( $item->get_enclosures() as $enclosure ){
					if( 'image' == $enclosure->medium && in_array( $enclosure->type, array( 'image/jpeg', 'image/gif', 'image/jpg', 'image/png' ) ) ){
						$src = $enclosure->link;
						continue;
					}
				}
				$image = '';
				if( ! empty( $src ) )
					$image = '<div class="flexslider floated-post-slideshow rss-image"><ul class="slides"><li><a href="#"><img src="' . $src . '" /></a></li></ul></div>';
				
				$items[] = '<article class="col clearfix">' . $image . '<div class="recent-posts-content"><h4><a href="' . $item->get_permalink() . '">' . $item->get_title() . '</a></h4><ul class="meta"><li>' . $item->get_date( get_option( 'date_format' ) ) . '</li></ul><div class="excerpt-container">' . $content . '</div>' . $enclosure_html . '</div></article>';
			}
			return sprintf( $format, implode( "\n", $items ) );
		}
		
		return '<pre>$feed = <textarea style="width: 300px; height: 500px;">' . print_r( $feed, true ) . '</textarea></pre>';
	} else {
		return '<p>' . $feed->get_error_message() . '</p>';
	}
}