limit characters when posting from form

To limit characters add this to your textarea: maxlength="200" changing “200” to whatever you want the character limit to be.

<textarea id="description" maxlength="200" tabindex="3" name="description2" cols="50" rows="6"></textarea>

For a character counter you will need some basic Javascript, something like this:

counter = function() {
    var value = $('#description').val();

    if (value.length == 0) {
        $('#totalChars').html(0);
        return;
    }

    var totalChars = value.length;

    $('#totalChars').html(totalChars); //change the selector to whatever the ID of your counter area is
};

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('#description').change(counter);
    $('#description').keydown(counter);
    $('#description').keypress(counter);
    $('#description').keyup(counter);
    $('#description').blur(counter);
    $('#description').focus(counter);
});