Personally, when I visit the front page of a WordPress blog, I don’t mind seeing the full content of each recent post. You an control how many posts are found on the front page of your full version WordPress blog by choosing Options > Reading > Show Number of Posts on the Front Page in the Administration Panel on the full version of WordPress and Blog Pages: Show at most… on WordPress.com blogs. Choose whatever number you like. Depending upon the length of your typical posts, this could be 1, 3, 5, or even 25. Whatever you feel is appropriate.
However, when I do a search on a WordPress blog, or visit the categories, archives, or any other multi-post pages, I’m intent on finding what I want, not reading through every post that may or may not apply. I’m on a quest, so I want information fast. This particular WordPress Theme, Rubric by Hadley Wickham, shows full posts on search and category pages – check it out (NOTE: The first post you see may be this post so scroll down the page) and witness my frustration. I’d love to change it, but I have no control over WordPress.com Themes.
I believe excerpts, especially in search results, helps the reader get to the information they need faster, making them happier readers, thus I’m in favor of using excerpts on multi-post pages in all WordPress Themes, not full content views.
Creating excerpts in multi-post views is the job of the WordPress Theme designer, and one of the choices they have. If you are using the full version of WordPress and have access to your Theme template files, you can change it to excerpts from full post displays yourself.
Changing the Full Post Content to an Excerpt
WordPress makes changing your content displays on your own full version WordPress easy. To change the way your content displays on these pages, edit the appropriate template files with the built-in Theme Editor (Presentation > Theme Editor) or any text editor and search for the_content() and change it to the_excerpt(). That’s it.
The multi-post displaying template files to change may include:
index.phparchives.phparchive.phpcategory.phpsearch.php
Do NOT change it in your single.php or page.php, if you have them in your Theme, as that will force only the excerpt and not the full content to show up on these single post views of your blog. Not a good thing.
By default, WordPress shows only the first 120 words or so of a post as the excerpt. It also strips out all links, styles, and tags so only the text appears. So if your excerpt doesn’t exactly match the look of the top part of your post, this is why.
There are two other ways to set your excerpt, which should work with WordPress.com blogs, overriding the_content() template tag.
On the Write Post panel in the Quicktag buttons, there is a button called more. Set your cursor to wherever you want the excerpt to be set and click it. It will inset <- - more - -> into your post. On the front page of your blog, the excerpt of the post will show until that point. When the visitor clicks the “read more” or “continue reading” link, they will be taken to that point so they can continue reading without having to read over what they have already read.
The other method is to write an explicit excerpt. Under the Upload Image box on the latest versions of WordPress, or between the title and post content of the old versions, you will find the Optional Excerpt box. Click on the + plus mark in the upper right corner to expand the box. Type in whatever you want for the excerpt and it will be shown on the front page.
Going Beyond the Simple Excerpt View
On Taking Your Camera on the Road, I wanted three different types of excerpts shown. It works so well, you don’t even notice unless I tell you what I did.
By default, the WordPress excerpt shows the first 120 words of the post. I tend to write really long posts, and there are times when I need to have the excerpt be a summary of the post rather than the first paragraph or two. Yet there are times when I want the whole post to show because it is short and to the point. I needed to set up the excerpts with a query that asks:
- If post content has an explicit excerpt,
display the explicit excerpt. - If post content uses the <!- -more- -> to mark the ending post of the excerpt,
display this excerpt. - If post content uses NO EXCERPT,
display the entire post.
If this sounds like something of interest to you, I explain it fully, with the solution, in my article on Customizing the WordPress Loop for Excerpt Queries.
If you are ready to turn over some of your multi-post pages to excerpts, then also take time to read Writing With Post Excerpts and Feed Excerpts in Mind to help you think about how you write when your blog displays excerpts.
Related Articles
- Writing With Post Excerpts and Feed Excerpts in Mind
- Template Tags/the excerpt
- The Loop in Action
- Customizing the Read More
- Designing Themes for WordPressMU – Fill in All the Details
- Customizing the WordPress Loop for Excerpt Queries
- Solving the WordPress Excerpt Problem – Sorta
- Show Just One Category in WordPress Categories
- WordPress Tips and Tricks for Template Files
- Creating Multiple Single Posts for Different Categories
- Free Text Only Editors for Templates, PHP, HTML, CSS, and More
- Using Author Template Tags Outside of the WordPress Loop
- Editing the Edit This WordPress Template Tag
- Dissecting the WordPress Post Title Link
Site Search Tags: wordpress, wordpress+content, wordpress+posts, wordpress+excerpt, excerpts, summary, summaries, posts, display+excerpts, wordpress+tips, wordpress+help, wordpress+techniques, wordpress+themes, template+files, templates, template+tags
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
38 Comments
Using the more button is a good idea but to me it has a little drawback especially if you use Technorati tags. I am not very sure of this but I noticed that Technorati robots always skipped my posts everytime I used the more button.
I am using Optional Excerpt and include the tags at the bottom. Technorati never missed my new post.
What I would like to see is the use of Show/Hide button instead of the usual – WP reads the whole page again and display it(like a refresh or reload). This way it would be faster for our readers and probably save some bandwidth.
Hiya. Thanks for the great article; it really helped!
Hi there
Thanks for that article. You helped me solve a big problem with the excerpt that I’d been having for days.
Thanks for these tips. The new theme that I added to my blog, would show all of the post in the category and I don’t like this either. I am like you, when I want to find something, I want to find it fast. Thanks for writing this post. I think that I will write a post about this and give you a backlink by referring people to this post.
Your site has become my favorite site!
Thanks for the info
Thanks. Now I know what the does, and it’s exactly what I was searching for.
Thank you, your post help me.
Thank you for writing straightforward instructions in English. I’ve been to the Codex a few times and still didn’t get it.
Your instructions I got right away. Thank you!
Is it possible to not use excerpts on the blog but have search engines cache and display your search results as excerpts? Is that possible?
@ Kamran:
Not to my knowledge. The more content a search engine indexes, the more keywords it can find and the better it will rank your site in the search results. I think it is more important to offer readers excerpts, especially for on-site search, category, and multiple post pageviews so they don’t have to scroll down and down and down to find what they want and need.
Hi
Do you know if it is possible to show part of the post only in the feed? like links to download content, which will only be available to RSS subscribers?
@ Amit:
To show only part of the post in the feed, use the MORE link to insert a “Continue Reading” link. This will automatically cut off the content in the outgoing feed to whatever length you want it to be.
I have a problem. Initially, I had posted some articles in my site but found out that the articles were too long. At that time I did not know of the WP default “more” button which I can use to create excerpts to my post. So I downloaded the advanced-excerpt plugin and activated it after uploading to my wp-content/plugin folder.
To my surprise, the entire posting contents were not showing in the website except only the post title. However, when I clicked the “File Under” section below the post tile, it shows as follows: “Bookmark It Hide Sites $$(’div.d1′).each( function(e) { e.visualEffect(’slide_up’,{duration:0.5}) });”
Thereafter, unsatisfied with this, I deleted my advanced-excerpt plugin and tried visiting the website again but again the entire post contents do not show at all.
I tried changing theme but nothing changes. So I copied out every post that i had in my website onto wordpad and saved it & got hold a plugin to delete all my posts in my website. Thereafter, I tried to re-post again one of the previous post entries by copy-paste from the said wordpad just to verify whether it works now that the advanced-excerpt plugin is no longer activated.
To my surprise, it still doesn’t show the entire post contents. Please visit my website. I don’t know why. Any assistance as to how to problem shoot? Kindly bear in mind, I am not familiar with theme editing nor html or css. Perhaps a step-by-step guide would be useful for me.
Thank you
@ forever4justice:
I answered your question in the first place you asked. Once you start messing around, things go from bad to worse.
Remove the current WordPress Theme and deactivate all of the Plugins. Upload the backup version of the Theme before all the messing around with things, and turn on the Plugins one by one and test.
DO NOT USE WORDPAD nor Word for anything that goes near your blog. Notepad or the free NoteTab text editor are best.
And please direct these WordPress support questions to the WordPress Support Forum where you can get prompt help and personal service to solve your WordPress problems, especially when they are of a critical nature bringing your site down.
Great article, helped me out big time! x
Thanks for the info a great help.
I got some questions:
1.) I can’t make excerpts using the “optional excerpt”
2.) what is a Theme editor and where could I get it?
Thanks again
What is a Theme editor and how could I go there?
Why can’t I use the “optional excerpt”?
Thanks for the info!
I tried and It worked! thank you so much!
@ aoikun2007:
The Theme editor is found in the Design Panel of WordPress. It allows you the ease of editing your WordPress Theme template files from the Administration Panels of WordPress.
You can use the optional excerpt or anything you want. This tutorial tells you how to display post excerpts ONLY in WordPress – no optional but by force.
Thanks for this, this site is a big help.
Is it possible to have only an excerpt in the RSS feed and not the whole post? I’m finding there are quite a few blogs basically stealing the content from my site and posting it on theirs verbatim from the feed and would like to stop this – is this possible?
@ Pratish:
You can change your WordPress Theme to only show excerpts only on the front page, which influences the feed, or use the MORE button in your blog posts to set the point manually where you want to make the cut off point.
You can also go into the Administration Panels in your Settings or Options and set the feed to display full or “summary” posts.
Everyone is getting their content ripped off. This doesn’t stop the scrapers, it just prevents them from getting all your content. See What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content for more specific information on how to handle content theft.
Thanks kindly for the help – it’s a cartoon blog so the scrapers basically get the text post but not the cartoon at least – still it’s irritating seeing your work on other people’s sites – I imagine the duplicate content doesn’t help you improve your search engine rankings either
Thanks also for the link – have reported the sites as spam sites to google – let’s see what happens!
Thank you for this post! This was very helpful.
Hi, I’m new to WordPress.I could not find the build-in Theme Editor and the Presentation. Could you help me out.
Thank you very much
The Theme Editor is under Appearance > Themes in WordPress 2.7, and under Presentation > Theme Editor in older versions of WordPress.
Hello Lorelle,
What I am trying to accomplish is to show “the excerpt” for only the most recent post in a category and then just titles for the remaining posts in the category. So basically my code pulls the 4 most recent posts from category 170 and displays excerpts for those 4 most recent posts. But what I would like to do is just display an excerpt for the most recent post in category 170 and then just the title of the next 3 posts. My code is below, any input is welcome.
Regards,
EJ
See WordPress Conditional Tags and tags associated with the_content() and the_excerpt() template tags on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, for tips and techniques.
To publish code as content in post and comments, see Writing Code in Your WordPress Posts and Writing and Publishing Code in Your WordPress Blog Posts
Hi Lorelle,
Am I able to display excerpts using the hosted version of WordPress? I have custom CSS but I don’t think it lets me change the php page.
Thanks
Lucy
By “hosted” I assume you mean WordPress.com? You cannot edit the WordPress Template Files that make up a WordPress Theme on WordPress.com, but you can force each post to be an excerpt by using the More button on the quicktag bar on the Edit Post page. Put it wherever you want the post to end when viewed on the front page of the blog.
Lorelle, Thanks for the tut, but for the life of me, I cannot find ANY mention of the_content any any of the .php files, except the one that handles single posts. I tried changing that for kicks and grins, and it did make all posts only able to show the excerpt. I am clawing my hair out. I am using the “gear” theme. Any ideas?
The index.php file is the place to change the template tag for
the_content. If you changed it in the single.php template, you would shorten your posts. Check the index.php template within your WordPress Theme folder, not outside of it. You will find it there.Thanks for your help, but there is definitely no mention of “the_content” in that theme’s index.php. That is wheat sent me elsewhere. There is an instance of the_post, but changing that lead to an undesired result. I am very confused, since this doesn’t make sense to me either. Could it be something specific to just this theme?
It could be. Contact the Theme author for details. There are some whacko Themes out there that do all kinds of things that break the rules, so I don’t know and I don’t track what all the thousands of Themes are doing. Good luck with it.
Hi Lorelle,
Great article, helped me sort out search result excerpts quickly and easily. I completely agree with you about search results showing full posts, I have seen this on numerous wordpress websites and it is very annoying!
Great post and thanks for you help.
I love you.
oops.. I guess I should have said “I love you, thank you for having this answer!”
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