Bolding several words at once

This is a neat idea that I think I may use too. Here’s the solution I’ve just cooked up.

First, add the following to your functions.php file:

/* BOLDED CONTENT */

// Affect the content after it's retrieved and before it's displayed
add_filter( 'the_content', 'bolded_content' );

function bolded_content( $content ) { 

    // Look for custom meta field called 'bold'
    if ( get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'bold', true ) ) {

        // Get 'bold' value
        $bold_terms = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'bold', true );

        // Split string into multiple values at each comma
        $keys= explode(", ",$bold_terms);

        // Add <strong> tag with special class if needed
        $bolded_content = preg_replace('/('.implode('|', $keys) .')/iu', '<strong class="bolded_content">\0</strong>', $content); // Adds 

        // Remove strong tag if it was added anywhere inside of an existing tag.
        // For example:  <a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/folder/<strong class="bolded_content">VALUE</strong>.html"> would break things.
        foreach ($keys as $key) {
            $bolded_content = preg_replace("|(<[^>]+?)(<strong class=\"bolded_content\">($key)</strong>)([^<]+?>)|","$1$3$4",$bolded_content);
        }

        $content = $bolded_content;

        }

    return $content;
}

Then add a custom field to your post where the name is “bold” and the value is whatever terms you wish to bold (separated by comma and a space). In your case, this would be:

Name: bold
Value: Team X, Youth Team B, C United

For further styling, you can tweak .bolded_content in your CSS file.

This should allow you to add as many terms as you like and they are set at the post/page level. That should do it. Hope that helps!

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