Customize Your Summary – Add An Excerpt to Posts and Pages in WordPress

Excerpts in Posts (Articles)

The excerpt is used in several places in your WordPress blog. If you don’t put in an excerpt for a post, the summary is taken from the first paragraph of the post. It is a good idea to create an excerpt for your articles because it gives you more control over what is displayed in the places that use the excerpt. Several popular areas where the excerpt is used include:

• Front page (index page). It is the summary you see next to the thumbnail (if you use thumbnails).
• Category Pages (when theme supports it)
• Archive Pages (when theme supports it)

Many themes support using the excerpt in all these places. If your particular theme doesn’t, you can easily add the functionality. Just substitute the phrase “the_excerpt” in places where it uses “the_content.” Typically, the files in which you will need to make this change include index.php, archive.php, and (perhaps) category.php. For simple edits like these, use the built-in theme editor which is found in your WordPress Admin Panel under Appearance > Editor. (Backup your files first!)

For more on how to do this, see the WordPress Codex topic Template Tags/the excerpt.

Where Do You Add The Excerpt?

You add your excerpt while you are creating a post or page in the WordPress editor. There is a box labeled “Excerpt” right below the editing area. See below for image and example. If you forget to add an excerpt, just go back into the post and add it in!

For more info on excerpts in general, search for Excerpt in the WordPress Codex.

Content Sliders Use Excerpts, Too

The text in the featured post slider in the Hybrid News theme is an excerpt. I include Hybrid News here because I use it on one of my blogs and I know a few other people who use it. Other sliders may use a different method for gathering the text shown in the slider.

Featured Posts Slider – If you do not explicitly add an excerpt to the posts that are featured there, the Slider just creates one from the first paragraph of the post. This can cause the text in the slider to overflow and have words cut off. Add an excerpt for those posts (2-3 lines) and you will have more control over what displays.

Excerpts in Pages

WordPress does not support adding excerpts to pages in an obvious way. For a plugin to add excerpts to pages, search the official plugin repository for “page excerpt.” The one I like is PJW Page Excerpt.

This post was inspired by a question by blogger and coach Gunther Hess at Internet Missionary. Thanks Gunther!

About Vernessa Taylor

Vernessa Taylor has written 114 posts here.

As a Technology Consultant, Vernessa Taylor works with both online and offline business owners. She writes about small business systems such as project management and customer referral systems at CoachNotes Blog. Follow her on Twitter @CoachNotesBlog.

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