Understanding How to Shorten Long Product Descriptions in WordPress
When working on your WordPress website, you might come across situations where product descriptions are significantly long. This could potentially make your website appear cluttered or overwhelm your visitors. Thankfully, WordPress offers a solution to this problem: You can shorten these descriptions and even add a ‘read more’ button. Let’s take a look at how you can achieve this in a user-friendly and efficient way.
Shortening the Long Descriptions
To make your product descriptions shorter, you need to add a snippet of code to your functions.php file in your theme, which is an integral part of your WordPress site. Keep in mind, this specific function will only apply to single product pages.
The code you’ll be using will set a word limit on the product description. Let’s say, for this example, the limit is fixed at 25 words. If your content surpasses this limit, it will trigger the rest of the function.
Before moving forward, it’s important to note that you may want to remove paragraph tags (‘
‘) from the content to keep the text clean and unbroken. Stripping “”p”” tags is optional but can be beneficial in reducing visual clutter.
Determining Content Length and Extracting Text Parts
We need to figure out if the content of your product description exceeds the predetermined 25-word limit. If it does, the function will then divide the text into two parts: one brief summary (the first 25 words) and the remaining text.
The function does this by using a PHP function called strwordcount. This function will return an associative array, wherein each word in the content is assigned a numeric position (the key) and the word itself (the value).
Forming New Content and Add ‘Read More’
Once it’s determined that the content surpasses the limit, the function will use another PHP feature called substr to extract two parts of the text. The first part contains the first ’25’ words of the product description and the second part includes the rest.
Then, a ‘Read More’ button can be added. When clicked, this button would reveal the remaining part of the text. A forcebalancetags function is used here to ensure no HTML tags are left open, which could break the layout of your site.
But, there’s a certain level of coding knowledge required to implement this, which is why beginners might find it challenging.
It’s crucial to back up your WordPress site before performing edits to your theme’s functions.php file. If any issues arise or if you make a mistake, you can safely revert back to the previous version of your site.
A good practice for adding custom functionality would be to use a site-specific plugin or a child theme, thus preserving your edits when updating your theme.
Remember, WordPress is exceptionally flexible. Learning these techniques not only enhances your website’s user experience but also equips you with the knowledge to customize your WordPress site to meet your specific needs. So, take it slow and happy WordPressing!