Shortcode tags in automatically generated descriptions

Hi ?eslav,

Thanks for your feedback. Shortcodes are removed from the content using the WordPress API’s strip_shortcodes() function before the description is generated, so normally they should not appear in the generated description. This needs more investigation. Could you provide more details about a specific shortcode that is not removed and perhaps the PHP code that creates it? Normally, you should be looking for the add_shortcode API call in the theme’s functions.php or in an accompanying plugin.

Regarding the appearance of the shortcodes in the og:description meta tag this happens because the description is generated in the very same way for all metadata types, so this is normal.

Currently, my free time is very limited. However, I’ll try to reply as soon as possible.

Kind Regards,
George

Hi George,

Sorry for a late reply, but I finally managed to have a closer look on the issue.

I checked out how description is generated in amt_get_the_excerpt() function and the problem happens whenever page/post content is entirely wrapped by shortcode: In such case, the strip_shortcodes() function returns an empty string, so generated excerpt is shorter than average description length and is subsequently extended via “nasty hack” (as your comment names it) – this time including shortcode tags.

To workaround the problem, I hooked into amt_get_the_excerpt_initial_content filter and run WP API do_shortcode() function from there. I’m not sure this is the best solution, it likely hurts site performance a bit, but it works for me and thus I consider this topic as resolved.

As for my other suggestion on Opengraph and Dublin Core metadata descriptions – my idea was that if automatic generation of meta description is turned off in
plugin settings, this should apply to og:description and dc:description too (even if the OG and DC metadata are set to auto-generate). But nevermind that, I realized such behavior might be quite confusing when I gave it second thought.

Thanks for your time.

Kind regards,
?eslav

Hi ?eslav,

Thank you for your useful feedback. It is much appreciated. This had been bugging me for a while.

I’ll take a closer look at the code at some later time and reply back.

Kind Regards,
George

I’ll keep this topic open (not resolved), so I don’t forget to check this issue more thoroughly.

George

An extra filter hook that pre-processes the content before it enters the description extraction algorithm has been added:

amt_get_the_excerpt_plain_text

The filtering function accepts 2 arguments, the post body and the the post object.

The filtering function is executed after the HTML tags and the shortcodes (using strip_shortcodes()) have been removed.

The visual composer shortcodes are still in the text, but now it is easier to isolate and remove.

I’ll be testing regex patterns to see what’s the most efficient way to further clean up the text from remaining shortcodes.

George

Hi ?eslav,

Took a closer look.

To workaround the problem, I hooked into amt_get_the_excerpt_initial_content filter and run WP API do_shortcode() function from there. I’m not sure this is the best solution, it likely hurts site performance a bit, but it works for me and thus I consider this topic as resolved.

Site performance should be fine. This is the intended use of the filter hook. I think this solution is fine.

As for my other suggestion on Opengraph and Dublin Core metadata descriptions – my idea was that if automatic generation of meta description is turned off in
plugin settings, this should apply to og:description and dc:description too (even if the OG and DC metadata are set to auto-generate). But nevermind that, I realized such behavior might be quite confusing when I gave it second thought.

This behavior will definitely be confusing for many users, so I’m afraid such a feature will not make it into the plugin. You can always filter the metadata and remove the descriptions manually if the aforementioned option is turned off. I could help you with the code if needed.

For now I’ll mark the topic as resolved. Feel free to reopen if needed.

Kind Regards,
George