Limit Characters in "Description"

[agent314]

I want to limit the number of characters someone can add in the Description field. I know that in the Submit admin we have the choice of:

Description Minimum characters:
Summary Maximum characters:

Is it possible to implement a "Description - Maximum characters" ? Either in Admin panel or in the code?

I just had someone enter an entire (long) article in the description... and after moderation approval... the entire thing posted... It was a legitimate poster... but we have to keep that from happening since the point is ultimately to send them to the posts URL.

Thanks...

Jeff

[Nick]

You would need a plugin (see Extra Post Fields in Submit) to run a length check during post submission and show an error if the post has exceeded the limit.

Alternatively, edit the bookmarking_post.php template to truncate the post when it is displayed:

<div class="show_post_content">
            <?php echo nl2br(truncate($h->post->content, 400); ?>
            <?php $h->pluginHook('show_post_content_post'); ?>
        </div>

That might upset someone who has written 2,000 characters, though.

[mabujo]

You could also implement a counter on the submit form in JavaScript without too much difficulty...

[richrf]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, that is one thing I can do though I am not too comfortable messing around with PHP. Also, any mods that I do to the scripts I will have to redo when there is a new version of the product and it is not clear what the impact may be. For this reason, I try to minimize the amount of code changes that I make to any CMS script. Thanks again for all of your help.

Rich

[Nick]

Also, any mods that I do to the scripts I will have to redo when there is a new version of the product

Not really. Hotaru is designed so that you don't lose your modifications when you upgrade the core or plugins. More info here. The only challenge is that when new features are added to templates, you might need to copy them into your modified templates.

[richrf]

I agree. But it depends upon where the code is placed as well as whether new custom code will continue to work with upgrades. My own disposition is to perform as little customization as necessary in order to ensure a relatively smooth upgrade path. This also assumes that the core code will evolve with backward compatibility. Wordpress, for example, does migrate well. Joomla and Drupal provide very little backward compatibility from version to version and are a headache because of this. From what I can tell so far there are mixed experiences with Hotaru - some plugins seem to migrate better than others from version to version. Is this the case or is it better than what I have observed.

Thanks for the link and additional info.

Rich