Hi projectmunton,
About the shortcode, I personally suggest that it’s best to hook them before wp_footer or after wp_header for full width display.
For automatic hook display, you can choose either Top, Bottom or both. Automatic Display hooks inside the content.
About the default wordpress excerpt, I personally customized it to avoid conflicts in wordpress excerpt. So you can customized the length without affecting the general settings of wordpress excerpt.
Hope you understand and thank you for your suggestions. I’ll keep that in mind. ??