Limiting the number of words or characters in the slug/permalink

1 comment

1. You can probably do something with the sanitize_title hook based on the context conditionally, but I’m not familiar enough with where else sanitize_title is used to say for sure that this is a good solution. The trick to this is going to be limiting your slug without including stupid words that are going to hurt your SEO. As a launching point, try this:

   add_filter( 'sanitize_title', 'wpse52690_limit_length', 1, 3 );
   
   function wpse52690_limit_length( $title, $raw_title, $context ) {
       //  filters
       if( $context != 'save' )
           return $title;
   
       //  vars
       $desired_length = 20; //number of chars
       $desired_words = 5; //number of words
       $prohibited = array(
           'the'
           ,'in'
           ,'my'
           ,'etc'
           //put any more words you do not want to be in the slug in this array
       );
   
       //  do the actual work
       // filter out unwanted words
       $_title = explode( ' ', $title );
       //if you want more than one switch to preg_split()
       $_title = array_diff( $_title, $prohibited );
       // count letters and recombine
       $new_title = '';
       for( $i=0, $count=count($_title); $i<$count; $i++ ) {
           //check for number of words
           if( $i > $desired_words )
               break;
           //check for number of letters
           if( mb_strlen( $new_title.' '.$_title[$i] ) > $desired_length )
               break;
   
           if( $i != 0 )
               $new_title .= ' ';
           $new_title .= $_title[$i];
       }
   
       return $new_title;
   }
   

   Note that that is completely untested and I literally just wrote it, so it may have some kinks in it, but it’s a good starting place for you.

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