Sillybean

Take control of your excerpts

Here are three short functions you can add to your theme’s functions.php file to change the way excerpts work on your site.

When you use the_excerpt() in a theme file, WordPress will first use the contents of the Excerpt field from your Post→Edit screen. If it’s empty, WordPress will auto-generate an excerpt. These first two functions change the way excerpts are generated. They will not affect any excerpts you write by hand.

Auto-generated excerpts are 55 words long. To change the length, return the number of words you prefer:

// Changing excerpt length
function change_excerpt_length($length) {
    return 100;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'change_excerpt_length');

Auto-generated excerpts have ‘[...]‘ appended to them. To remove or change this, use:

// Changing excerpt 'more' text (normally […])
    function change_excerpt_more($more) {
    return ' (Continue reading…)';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'change_excerpt_more');

In a standard WordPress setup, only posts have excerpts. If you’d like to use them for pages too, you can install a plugin (PJW Page Excerpt, Excerpt Editor) or just add this to functions.php:

// add excerpts to pages
function add_page_excerpt_meta_box() {
    add_meta_box( 'postexcerpt', __('Excerpt'), 'post_excerpt_meta_box', 'page', 'normal', 'core' );
}
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'add_page_excerpt_meta_box' );

There is no easy function to prevent WordPress from stripping the HTML formatting from your excerpts. There are two plugins you can use, however: the_excerpt Reloaded and Advanced Excerpt.