Meta descriptions and selecting the first 'n' characters

[Gazley]

Hi there,

I just wondered what other users are doing in the following scenario.

I use the summary field to contain hold text that I use as the meta description in search engines. If the field is empty, I would like to select the first 'n' characters of the body field so that at least something is being used for the meta description.

There are numerous ways to do this in PHP. I recall that ExpressionEngine had a first party add-on that did something similar to this and also added '...' to the end of the string too, so that you could use existing copy as a summary in other places, like, the home page.

Before I re-invent the wheel, I thought I would ask whether there is a standard PW approach or some handy-dandy class you could recommend?

Thanks!

--Gary

[Soma]

I'm sure there's more and other ways but look here

http://processwire.com/talk/topic/3429-how-to-set-text-linecharacter-limits-in-templates/

[Gazley]

Thanks Soma - some interesting stuff there and definately along the lines I was looking for.