Category: Wordpress Tutorials

In this tutorial, we will show you how to limit comment length in WordPress, so you can set both minimum and maximum comment length limit for your WordPress site.

Why limit comment length in WordPress?

In our experience of moderating online discussions for the past decade, we have found that most helpful comments are above 60 characters and below 5000 characters in length.

When a person writes a one-word comment, it usually is not very helpful. In most cases, it is spam because the author is simply trying to earn a back link from your site.

However when a person writes a comment above 5000 characters, its usually a rant / complaint that in most cases is not relevant to that particular article.

By setting comment length limits in WordPress, you can improve the quality of your comments.

There are two methods to limit comment length in WordPress. The first method requires you to install a plugin. The second method uses a simple code snippet that you can add to your site.

Method 1: Limiting Comment Lenght Using a Plugin

First thing you need to do is install and activate Control Comment Lengthplugin. Upon activation, simply go to Settings » Control Comment Length to configure the plugin settings.

The plugin’s user interface is in German with English. You can set both minimum and maximum number of characters a comment can have. We recommend using 60 for minimum and 5000 for maximum character count.

You can also add messages that will be visible to users when there comments are either too short or too long. The plugin only provides these messages in the German language. You can replace it with your own message.

Method 2: Limit Comment Length Using Code Snippet

The second method is for users who don’t mind dealing with code code. We will add a filter hook to preprocess_comment. This filter is run before WordPress saves any comments to database or runs any other pre-processing on submitted comments. We will use it to check the comment length. If it is above or below the set comment length parameters, then we will show users an error message.

Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

add_filter( 'preprocess_comment', 'wpb_preprocess_comment' );
 
function wpb_preprocess_comment($comment) {
    if ( strlen( $comment['comment_content'] ) > 5000 ) {
        wp_die('Comment is too long. Please keep your comment under 5000 characters.');
    }
if ( strlen( $comment['comment_content'] ) < 60 ) {
        wp_die('Comment is too short. Please use at least 60 characters.');
    }
    return $comment;
}

We hope this tutorial helped you limit comment length in WordPress.

Adding Border Around iframe Videos in WordPress

First thing you need to do is to open a post or page containing your iframe video embed code. A typical iframe embed code should looks something like this:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzOOy1tWBCg&w=560&h=315]

You can add a border around it by adding inline style to the code like this:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzOOy1tWBCg&w=560&h=315]

Simply change the width of the border as well as the color, and you’re done.

While adding an iframe border works, there is actually a better way to add a border around videos in WordPress. That’s by using oEmbed.

Adding Border Around oEmbed Videos in WordPress

WordPress comes with built-in oEmbed support. Basically WordPress allows you to paste the link of the video, and it will automatically get the embed code for them. Now this only works for oEmbed enabled sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Hulu, etc. (See: how to easily add videos in WordPress using oEmbed)

Now that you know how to add a video with oEmbed, here is how you can add a border around oEmbed videos in WordPress.

When adding a video using oEmbed, simply wrap the URL in span tag with inline style parameters, like this:

<span style="border:3px solid #EEE;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzOOy1tWBCg</span>

If you want to add a same border around all video iframes, then it would be best to add a CSS class to your theme’s stylesheet.

.frame-border { 
border:3px solid #EEE; 
}

Now you can use the CSS class in your iframe embed code like this:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzOOy1tWBCg&w=560&h=315]

You can also use the same CSS class in the span tag around your oEmbed video URLs, like this:

<span class="frame-border">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzOOy1tWBCg</span>

The benefit of using a single CSS class is that if you change themes later, then you can easily change the colors with one click vs going back and editing each video individually.

We hope this tutorial helped you add an iframe border around a video embed in WordPress.

In this tutorial, we will cover how to show recent posts by category in your WordPress sidebar.

Display Recent Posts by Category (Plugin Method)

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Category Posts Widgetplugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Appearance » Widgets, there you will notice the new Category Posts widget in the list of available widgets.

Simply drag and drop Category Posts widget to a sidebar where you want to display recent posts by category.

The widget options are quite self explanatory. First you need to provide a title for the category posts section and choose a category. After that you can choose other display options like number of posts, excerpts, featured image, etc.

Once you are done, click the save button to store your widget settings. You can now visit your site to see recent posts by category in action.

Display Recent Posts by Category without a Plugin (Code Snippet)

In this method, we will use a code snippet to display recent posts from a category.

First you need to add this code in your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function wpb_postsbycategory() {
// the query
$the_query = new WP_Query( array( 'category_name' => 'announcements', 'posts_per_page' => 10 ) ); 
 
// The Loop
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
    $string .= '

Make sure that you replace 'announcements' with your own category slug.

This code simply queries WordPress to retrieve 10 posts from a specified category. It then displays the posts in a bulleted list. If a post has a featured image (post thumbnail), then it will show the featured image as well.

In the end, we created a shortcode 'categoryposts' and enabled shortcode in text widgets.

There are three ways of displaying the recent posts by category using this code snippet.

First, you can simply paste the following code anywhere in your desired template file location (such as footer.php, single.php, etc).

Second and third method relies on using the shortcode in the widget area or inside your posts / pages.

Simply visit Appearance » Widgets and add a text widget to your sidebar. Next add [categoryposts] shortcode in the text widget and save it. You can now preview your website to see recent posts by category in the sidebar.

If you want to show recent posts by categories on specific post or pages, then simply paste the shortcode in the post content area.

By default, your list may not look very good. You will need to use CSS to style the category posts list. You can use the code below as an starting point in your theme or child theme’s stylesheet.

ul.postsbycategory {
list-style-type: none;
}
 
.postsbycategory img {
float:left; 
padding:3px;
margin:3px;
border: 3px solid #EEE;
}

That’s all, we hope this tutorial helped you display recent posts by category in WordPress sidebar.