How To Limit Number of Characters In Title...?

If you go to theblogconnection.com, you will see in the recent entries column,

that the longer post titles runs into a second line. How can I limit the number of

characters displayed? So that the titles can be more like "25 Ways To Improve

Your...." instead of "25 Ways To Improve Your Sites Popularity." What is the

code to do this?

 

$maxlen = 40;

if (strlen($title) > $maxlen)
{
    $title = substr($title, 0, $maxlen) . '...';
}

PHP:

 

Thanks, Im still learning the php thing. Where would I put this in my code:

<h3>Recent Entries</h3>
<ul class="dates">
	<?php

		// I love Wordpress so
		query_posts('showposts=7');
	?>

	<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><span class="date"><?php the_time( $hemingway->date_format() ) ?></span> <?php the_title() ?> </a></li>
	<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
</ul>

PHP:

 

upshiftmedia, does the last bit of code you posted even work..?
I can see a lot of parsing errors in it.. from first sight.

 

Ya it is placed in its own block. So it does work. So where would I place the code?

 

Use PHP built in wordwrap function.

<h3>Recent Entries</h3>
<ul class="dates">
    <?php

        // I love Wordpress so
        query_posts('showposts=7');
    ?>

    <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><span class="date"><?php the_time( $hemingway->date_format() ) ?></span> <?php wordwrap(the_title(), 40, "<br/>");); ?> </a></li>
    <?php endwhile; endif; ?>
</ul>

Code (markup):

Edit: The way you wrote your post made me think you wanted wordwrap (since you actually wrap your posts :S).

Peace,

 

Hmm...that didn't work

 

Okay, since I don't know anything about WP, I'll try it the cheesy way:

<h3>Recent Entries</h3>
<ul class="dates">
    <?php

        // I love Wordpress so
        query_posts('showposts=7');
    ?>

    <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><span class="date"><?php the_time( $hemingway->date_format() ) ?></span>

<?php 

ob_start();
the_title();
$title = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

$maxlen = 40;

if (strlen($title) > $maxlen)
{
    $title = substr($title, 0, $maxlen) . '...';
}

echo $title;

 ?> </a></li>
    <?php endwhile; endif; ?>
</ul>

PHP:

Not sure if that's gonna work, but give it a try.

 

Ok so I have decided to use the Fuzzy Recent Posts by semiologic to fix the problem. Now the only issue that I am having is styling the plugin to look like the other two blocks. I know I have to edit the plugin in code, but i'm not sure where to add the <ul class> and the <li> to create the lines.

Thanks Everyone for the help.

 

I love you! It worked perfectly. I got rid of the plug-in and used this. Thank you for the help.

Mike