Hey Mark,
Out of the box, WordPress does not really allow the display of shortcodes inside excerpts. You need to write a custom function and filter out the shortcodes and strings. I’ll provide a sample below.
But, please note that writing custom functions or code, in general, is beyond the scope of our product support. If you will experience issues with the code sample below now or in the future, you will need to either learn WordPress development or hire a WordPress developer to fix and/or enhance it.
Here’s the sample code which I just tested and works on my site.
// Remove Shortcodes from excerpt
function remove_shortcode_from_excerpt( $excerpt ) {
if ( is_search() ) {
$excerpt = strip_shortcodes( $excerpt );
}
return $excerpt;
}
add_filter('the_excerpt', 'remove_shortcode_from_excerpt');
// Remove words from excerpt
function remove_words_from_excerpt( $excerpt ) {
// Words are purposely broken down so you'll see how to add more strings or text.
$words = array(
'Download Product',
'Information',
'Sheet [PDF]',
);
foreach ( $words as $word ) {
$excerpt = str_replace( $word, '', $excerpt);
}
return $excerpt;
}
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'remove_words_from_excerpt');
###Result screenshots:
Before:
After:
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Regarding your other question, you can download previous versions of plugins in WordPress repository in the plugin’s Advanced page like this https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/advanced/. Scroll down the Previous Versions section, download the needed version and then install it to your site by uploading it.
Hope that helps and thank you for understanding.