Truncating Titles in Previous/Next Links?

I can imagine a very, very complicated method of doing this without editing the core source files, but let’s stick to the basics (as I’d rather not spend a few hours coding this up):

In wp-includes/template-functions-links.php you’ll need to change two function, i.e. next_post and previous_post. In 1.5, you’ll find previous_post around line 300; next_post is the ‘next’ function after. Look for the following line in both:

$string .= wptexturize($lastpost->post_title);

(next_post will have $nextpost->post_title) Change it to this:

$chars = strlen(utf8_decode($lastpost->post_title));
$lastpost_title = substr(wptexturize($lastpost->post_title), 0, 20);
if($chars > 20) {
$lastpost_title .= '...';
}
$string .= wptexturize($lastpost_title);

Make sure to change all $lastpost elements to $nextpost in the next_post function.

Note: Back up source files before editing, and comment your changes for future reference.

Those initial strings don’t seem to be anywhere in that php file…and I even used Dreamweaver’s find function.

Oh well. Thanks anyway.

I think I’ll just tweak out a version of the links that puts the post title in the “title” attribute of the link, but leaves the visible links as “previous post” and “next post”.