public function truncateHtmlText($text, $characters = 300)
    {
        // Clean up html tags and special characters
        $text = preg_replace('/<[^>]*>/', ' ', $text);
        $text = str_replace("\r", '', $text); // replace with empty space
        $text = str_replace("\n", ' ', $text); // replace with space
        $text = str_replace("\t", ' ', $text); // replace with space
        $text = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $text); // remove multiple consecutive spaces
        $text = preg_replace('/^[\s]/', '', $text); // Remove leading space from excerpt
        $text = preg_replace('/[\s]$/', '', $text); // Remove trailing space from excerpt

        // If we are already within the limit, just return the text
        if (mb_strlen($text) <= $characters) {
            return $text;
        }

        // Truncate to character limit if longer than requested
        $text = substr($text, 0, $characters);

        // We don't want the string cut mid-word, so search for the last space and trim there
        $lastSpacePosition = strrpos($text, ' ');
        if (isset($lastSpacePosition)) {
            // Cut the text at this last word
            $text = substr($text, 0, $lastSpacePosition);
        }

        return $text;
    }