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Juliepr Remove NBSP

WordPress plugin that replaces non-breaking spaces with ordinary spaces when posts and pages are saved

by Sergei Ashmarin · github.com/sashmarin/juliepr-remove-nbsp · website

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/sashmarin/juliepr-remove-nbsp/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/sashmarin/juliepr-remove-nbsp ↗

A small WordPress plugin that replaces non-breaking spaces with ordinary spaces when posts and pages are saved. No settings are required.

Requires WordPress 6.5 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.

Behavior

  • Processes titles, content, and excerpts of the built-in post and page types.
  • Replaces the literal UTF-8 U+00A0 character,  ,  , and  . Numeric entities with leading zeroes and uppercase entity variants are also supported.
  • Replaces each occurrence with one U+0020 space; consecutive spaces are not collapsed.
  • Runs before the database write via wp_insert_post_data, including saves through the block editor, classic editor, REST API, and wp_insert_post() / wp_update_post().
  • Processes the entire stored field, including HTML attributes, block attributes, and code examples containing these forms.
  • Leaves other entities, line breaks, tabs, narrow non-breaking spaces (U+202F), custom fields, attachments, custom post types, and revision/autosave records unchanged.
  • Existing content is processed on its next save. Activation does not run a bulk cleanup. Deactivation does not undo saved replacements.

Installation

  1. Copy the juliepr-remove-nbsp folder to wp-content/plugins/, or upload the plugin ZIP in Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
  2. Activate Juliepr Remove NBSP. Multisite network activation is supported; only saves on sites where the plugin is active are processed.
  3. Save a post or page to normalize its non-breaking spaces.

Translation

The plugin metadata is English. A Russian (ru_RU) translation is included as a native WordPress .l10n.php file, with an editable .po source. No .mo file is used or required. The WordPress user/site locale controls the language shown in the Plugins screen.

After editing the PO source, rebuild the PHP translation with WP-CLI:

wp i18n make-php languages/juliepr-remove-nbsp-ru_RU.po

The plugin registers its text domain on init and uses WordPress just-in-time translation loading.

Verification

With PHP installed, run the standalone behavior checks (no WordPress installation required):

php tests/normalization.php
php -l juliepr-remove-nbsp.php
php -l languages/juliepr-remove-nbsp-ru_RU.l10n.php

On a test WordPress site, save and reload a post and a page containing all supported forms in the title, content, and excerpt. Check the stored fields or code editor for U+0020 spaces, confirm the block editor reports no invalid blocks, and verify that the plugin description is Russian when the user language is Russian.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. Author: Sergei Ashmarin (sashmarin).