Question

Hopefully this is simple to solve. I have a few elements which pull in form data previously entered into the database, which are added to the post as custom fields. I extract this using a php query as such:

<a href="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'societywebsite', true); ?>" target="_blank" >Website</a> 

Obviously, this appears in the Loop (content.php) and will get added to any appropriate post. Sometimes, however, there won’t be any data because a user chose not to enter a website into the ‘societywebsite’ field on a form. When this happens, there’s no need for a link to ‘Website’ to be there, because it wouldn’t go anywhere useful.

What I’d like to know is how to have an If clause that checks if the data exists and then shows the link only if it does. I don’t mind javascript, but the cleaner and less ‘hacky’ the solution, the better, as content.php will run multiple times for search results.

Thanks so much for any help or advice you can provide.

Answer 1

Another way to do this, more according to the WordPress Codex is the following…

$societywebsite = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'societywebsite', true);

if ($societywebsite != '') {
    echo '<a href="' . $societywebsite . '" target="_blank" >Website</a>';
}

You can add an ‘else’ at the end of this for debugging purposes.