Title: Sectionize
Author: Weston Ruter
Published: <strong>November 4, 2009</strong>
Last modified: December 18, 2009

---

Search plugins

This plugin **hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress**.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when
used with more recent versions of WordPress.

![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/sectionize.svg)

# Sectionize

 By [Weston Ruter](https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/sectionize.zip)

 * [Details](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/sectionize/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/sectionize/#reviews)
 * [Development](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/sectionize/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sectionize/)

## Description

_This plugin is developed at
 [Shepherd Interactive](http://www.shepherd-interactive.com/)
for the benefit of the community. No support is available. Please post any questions
to the [support forum](https://wordpress.org/tags/sectionize?forum_id=10).

Takes HTML content which contains flat heading elements inline with paragraphs
 
and automatically nests them withing HTML5 `<section>` elements. It also conditionally
prepends an `<ol>` Table of Contents (TOC) with links to the sections in the content,
for example:

    ```
    <nav class='toc'><ol>
        <li><a href="#section-first-top">First Top</a></li>
        <li><a href="#section-second-top">Second Top</a>
        <ol>
            <li><a href="#section-first-sub">First Sub</a></li>
            <li><a href="#section-second-sub">Second Sub</a></li>
        </ol>
        </li>
        <li><a href="#section-third-top">Third Top</a></li>
    </ol></nav>
    ```

This would reflect original post content such as:

    ```
    <h2>First Top</h2>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    <h2>Second Top</h2>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    <h3>First Sub</h2>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    <h3>Second Sub</h2>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    <h2>Third Top</h2>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    ```

Original post content such as this would be sectionized as follows:

    ```
    <section id="section-first-top">
        <h2>First Top</h2>
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    </section>
    <section id="section-second-top">
        <h2>Second Top</h2>
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
        <section id="section-first-sub">
            <h3>First Sub</h2>
            Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
        </section>
        <section id="section-second-sub">
            <h3>Second Sub</h2>
            Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
        </section>
    </section>
    <section id="section-third-top">
        <h2>Third Top</h2>
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
    </section>
    ```

Adding a table of contents as such not only aids navigation for visitors once
 on
the page, but Google also now provides direct links to such sections in relevant
search result snippets (see [announcement](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/jump-to-information-you-want-right-from.html)).
So people browsing search results may be able to see your section links right from
the results page and then be able to jump directly to the relevant section.

The start/end tags for both the sections and the TOC, as well as the prefixes
 used
when generating the section IDs, may all be configured via the following WordPress
options (with their defaults):

 * `sectionize_id_prefix`: `'section-'`
 * `sectionize_start_section`: `'<section id="%id">'`
 * `sectionize_end_section`: `</section>`
 * `sectionize_include_toc_threshold`: `2`
 * `sectionize_before_toc`: `'<nav class="toc">'`
 * `sectionize_after_toc`: `'</nav>'`
 * `sectionize_disabled`: `false` (no corresponding function argument)

These global WordPress options may be overridden by individual posts/pages by
 creating
custom fields (postmeta) with the same names.

These options are retreived if their corresponding arguments are not supplied
 to
the `sectionize()` function (that is, if they are `null`):

    ```
    function sectionize($original_content,
                        $id_prefix = null,
                        $start_section = null,
                        $end_section = null,
                        $include_toc_threshold = null,
                        $before_toc = null,
                        $after_toc = null)
    ```

This `sectionize()` function is added as a filter for `the_content` (this is
 disabled
if the option or postmeta `sectionize_disabled` evaluates to `true`):

    ```
    add_filter('the_content', 'sectionize');
    ```

Noted above, the TOC is conditionally included. It is not included if:

 1. there are no headings in the content (thus there is nothing to sectionize),
 2. the headings are not nested properly (see below), or
 3. the heading count does not meet the threshold (or the threshold is -1)

If the number of headings in the content is less than the
 include_toc_threshold
option/argument then the TOC is not displayed; likewise, if `include_toc_threshold`
is `-1` then the TOC is not displayed.

_Important!_ Regarding headings being “nested properly”, you must ensure that
 you
properly arrange your headings in a hierarchical manner in which no heading is immediately
preceeded by another heading that is more than one level greater (e.g. an `h3` must
be preceeded by an `h2` or another `h3`). For example, this works:

    ```
    h2
        h3
        h3
            h4
        h3
    h2
    ```

But this does not:

    ```
    h2
        h4 -- fail
            h6 -- fail
    h2
    ```

If you make such a mistake, this plugin will abort and have no effect. An error

notice will be included in the HTML output in the form of an HTML comment.

Please see source code for additional documentation: numerous filters are provided

to further customize the behavior. _Be one with the code!_ To help serve HTML5 content,
see the [XHTML5 Support</a<> plugin.](https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xhtml5-support/)

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“Sectionize” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this
plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ Weston Ruter ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/)

[Translate “Sectionize” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/sectionize)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sectionize/), check
out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/sectionize/), or subscribe
to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/sectionize/) by 
[RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/sectionize/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 2009-11-03: 1.0

 * Initial release

#### 2009-12-17: 1.1

 * Moved `add_option('sectionize_...)` calls to activation hook.
 * Adding `sectionize_toc_text` filter so that the link text in the TOC can be customized,
   
   along with a default filter which strips off tags and a trailing ‘:’

## Meta

 *  Version **1.1**
 *  Last updated **16 years ago**
 *  Active installations **10+**
 *  WordPress version ** 2.8 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **2.9.2**
 *  Language
 * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/sectionize/)
 * Tags
 * [HTML5](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/html5/)[sections](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/sections/)
   [seo](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/seo/)[table of contents](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/table-of-contents/)
   [toc](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/toc/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://srd.wordpress.org/plugins/sectionize/advanced/)

## Ratings

No reviews have been submitted yet.

[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sectionize/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sectionize/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ Weston Ruter ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sectionize/)