Hi. A couple days ago I posted in the comments, and I was invited to continue this in this forum.

My question was if it’s possible to copy/paste VC shortcodes into a regular “text widget” (for a sidebar, footer, etc.) This can work, except shortcode padding, margins, borders, and backgrounds get ignored. In the comments I was told the following code put into functions.php will make it work:

add_filter('widget_text', 'dhvc_view_shortcode_parse_custom_css',0);
function dhvc_view_shortcode_parse_custom_css2($content){
    $css = '';
    if ( preg_match( '/\s*(\.[^\{]+)\s*\{\s*([^\}]+)\s*\}\s*/', $content ) ) {
        WPBMap::addAllMappedShortcodes();
        preg_match_all( '/' . get_shortcode_regex() . '/', $content, $shortcodes );
        foreach ( $shortcodes[2] as $index => $tag ) {
            $shortcode = WPBMap::getShortCode( $tag );
            $attr_array = shortcode_parse_atts( trim( $shortcodes[3][ $index ] ) );
            if ( isset( $shortcode['params'] ) && ! empty( $shortcode['params'] ) ) {
                foreach ( $shortcode['params'] as $param ) {
                    if ( 'css_editor' === $param['type'] && isset( $attr_array[ $param['param_name'] ] ) ) {
                        $css .= $attr_array[ $param['param_name'] ];
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        foreach ( $shortcodes[5] as $shortcode_content ) {
            $css .= dhvc_view_shortcode_parse_custom_css2( $shortcode_content);
        }
    }
    return $css;
}
function dhvc_view_shortcode_parse_custom_css($content){
    if(!class_exists('WPBMap'))
        return $content;
    $css = '';
    if ( ! preg_match( '/\s*(\.[^\{]+)\s*\{\s*([^\}]+)\s*\}\s*/', $content ) ) {
        return $content;
    }
    WPBMap::addAllMappedShortcodes();
    preg_match_all( '/' . get_shortcode_regex() . '/', $content, $shortcodes );
    foreach ( $shortcodes[2] as $index => $tag ) {
        $shortcode = WPBMap::getShortCode( $tag );
        $attr_array = shortcode_parse_atts( trim( $shortcodes[3][ $index ] ) );
        if ( isset( $shortcode['params'] ) && ! empty( $shortcode['params'] ) ) {
            foreach ( $shortcode['params'] as $param ) {
                if ( 'css_editor' === $param['type'] && isset( $attr_array[ $param['param_name'] ] ) ) {
                    $css .= $attr_array[ $param['param_name'] ];
                }
            }
        }
    }
    foreach ( $shortcodes[5] as $shortcode_content ) {
        $css .= dhvc_view_shortcode_parse_custom_css2( $shortcode_content );
    }

    return (!empty($css) ? '<style type="text/css">'.$css.'</style>' : '' ).$content;
}

With this code, if one of my shortcodes contains any margins, borders, padding, or background, then the entire contents in the text widget will not display at all.

I was told in the comments that it should work, and if not then post in the forum. Thanks so much for any help with this!